Title: The Disappearances
Author: Emily Bain Murphy
Date Started: November 4
Date Finished: November 11
Format: Hardcover from my shelf
What if the ordinary things in life suddenly…disappeared? Aila Quinn’s mother, Juliet, has always been a mystery: vibrant yet guarded, she keeps her secrets beyond Aila’s reach. When Juliet dies, Aila and her younger brother Miles are sent to live in Sterling, a rural town far from home–and the place where Juliet grew up. Sterling is a place with mysteries of its own. A place where the experiences that weave life together–scents of flowers and food, reflections from mirrors and lakes, even the ability to dream–vanish every seven years.
No one knows what caused these “Disappearances,” or what will slip away next. But Sterling always suspected that Juliet Quinn was somehow responsible–and Aila must bear the brunt of their blame while she follows the chain of literary clues her mother left behind. As the next Disappearance nears, Aila begins to unravel the dual mystery of why the Disappearances happen and who her mother truly was. One thing is clear: Sterling isn’t going to hold on to anyone’s secrets for long before it starts giving them up.
This was another book from a book subscription box and this one was also very strange. When I first read the title I thought for sure that I was in for a deep mystery about people disappearing. Then I started the novel and found out how wrong I was. It isn’t people that disappeared, it was things like scent, stars, reflections, etc. I somehow did not see that coming and was a little bit intrigued so I kept reading…and reading…and reading. I think this book felt relatively long because I was also reading another book at the time and at certain intervals I would take a break from this one to switch to that one.
But still it was rather long and the mystery of what was going on in Sterling and the other sister cities was a little bit drawn out. Aila was a good character, she didn’t give up, and I liked that she didn’t grow up so fast just because of her mother’s death and that her father had gone to war. She still gets annoyed with her brother. She still does what teenagers do and gets worried about her popularity in this new town. She starts crushing on Will – the son of the people that her and her brother are staying with – and has to deal with another girl’s hate because of it.
Final Rating: 3 out of 5 stars. I think the thing that was most intriguing about this book was that it’s marked as a historical fiction book on Goodreads. And yeah, it does take place in 1942, but other than the fact that Aila and Miles’ dad goes off to fight in the war, it doesn’t actually feel like a historical fiction book to me. It felt rather modern. I also didn’t like the interlude chapters dealing with Stefen. It reminded me too much of The Body Finder series and it actually took away from the plot.
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