The Disappearances
By: Emily Bain Murphy
Grade: A-
A family tragedy and World War 2 forces Aila and her younger brother back to her mother’s hometown to live with her childhood friend. But Sterling is not your regular town. Every seven years something has disappeared. Not small somethings either. Stars. Reflections. Dreams. Aila arrives right in time for the next disappearance and begins to wonder about her mother’s connection to the disappearances.
I really enjoyed this one. I’ve been looking for mysteries and creepy atmospheric stories pretty much since Labor Day. This definitely fit the bill. Aila’s a strong narrator and I always like when the people are for the most part generally good strong characters.
The disappearances themselves were definitely a draw. I appreciated that the author doesn’t keep Aila and Miles in the dark for long at all. (You really can’t considering the things that are missing.) She does a good job to of showing how much it hurts but how quickly you can get used to it especially if you never had it like some of the townspeople.
There were actually a couple of parts where I teared up.
There is another narration and we actually get most of the back story through that one. I don’t want to give too much of it away but it does a good job of building up. It also includes animal and in some cases human experimentation. Not much granted. But that kind of thing always makes me cringe.
I’m a little unsure of the Shakespeare connection throughout the book. Grant you I don’t know a great deal about Shakespeare. On the one hand I appreciated the literary elements of it. On the other hand I didn’t entirely believe it. But in the end I was enjoying The Disappearances too much so I was more than wiling to go with it.
Recommend: Yes. Definitely a good, rather different mystery.
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