Two young enslaved men, Samuel and Isaiah dwell among the animals they keep in the barn, helping out in the fields when their day is done. The Halifax plantation is known as Empty by the slaves who work it under the pitiless gaze of its overseers and its owner, Massa Paul. blends the lyricism of Toni Morrison with the vivid prose of Zora Neale Hurston to characterise the forceful, enduring bond of love, and what happens when brutality threatens the purest form of serenity. January is chock-full of amazing new releases so much so that getting it down to 18 was incredibly hard. And it’s one filled with fantastic books that I can’t wait to read. In a world where the misery of others is often mined for entertainment - whether it be via podcasts or documentaries - If I Disappear throws into sharp relief how desensitized we can become when we treat real life like a game.A new year is about to start. When she starts to call Sera “Rachel,” replacing her lost daughter with a near-stranger, it’s hard not to feel a twinge to the heart. Side characters are similarly rich - sad cowboy Jed is the romantic prospect we’re doomed to root for, and even Rachel’s overbearing mother, Addy, has her likable side. If anything, sans too much background, true crime fans are able to easily slot themselves in her shoes, thereby examining their own darkness. We don’t get a lot about Sera’s background - she’s in her thirties, there’s an ex-husband and a miscarriage - but her obsessive thoughts and ruminations on womanhood render her a complete person. The thriller genre relies heavily on plot, but despite boasting such a complicated one, If I Disappear never falls into the all-too-common trap of half-drawn characters and cardboard motivations.
Without ties, close family, or friends, Sera finds herself the perfect prey for a myriad of possible suspects, including Rachel’s controlling mother and wacky father a drunken cowboy with a dark past and various and sundry townspeople who aren’t too fond of the Bard family. When Rachel goes missing - or, rather, when she stops dropping new episodes - Sera decides that it’s up to her to find the woman she has listened to every episode of her podcast more than once, after all. A drifter loner with no family? Not so much.
Beautiful white women with tons of family ties? The cops are on it. If I Disappear follows a woman named Sera who is transfixed by true crime podcaster, Rachel Bard, and the concept of women disappearing - a common trope of the genre that speaks to who society cares about. A skillful dissection of true-crime podcast culture and those obsessed with it, this new novel has more twists and fakeouts than an episode of Serial. The hunter becomes the hunted in Eliza Jane Brazier’s upcoming thriller, If I Disappear, out today via Berkley Publishing.
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