The Night I Disappeared - Julie Reece Deaver

Ali Mark
Feb 16, 2016
4 min read

Story line - Unique - 5 STARS

Writing style - Average - 3 STARS

Characters - Average - 3 STARS

Excitement factor - Average - 3.5 STARS

Believability - Great - 5 STARS

Entertainment factor - Good - 4 STARS

Similarity to other books - Unique - 5 STARS

Cover art/dust jacket art - Average - 3 STARS

Title relevance - Great - 5 STARS

Goodreads users gave this book a 3.80 I think it was more deserving of a 3.94.

Published in 2002.

Pages: 242.

Number of books by author: 5 works.

Genre: YA Fiction.

After a rocky end to her junior year, Jamie also finds out she'll be moving (for the summer anyways) to Chicago with her mom while she tries a big case. This only gets worse when she finds out that Webb, her crush, will be without technology and living off the grid as he goes backpacking through Europe. When Jamie meets her new friend Morgan, will Jamie's shaken reality destroy her? Or will she embrace her new reality?

You may like this book if you like the following sub-genres:

Therapy Stories
Mental Health
Legal/Law

I was really quite impressed with this story line. The beginning was kind of, teen-angsty and slightly annoying, but what outcast in high school isn't a little angsty? I thought the story line was set up well - we're introduced to the disaster that is Jamie's existence, and then we're later clued into why her existence is so different than everyone else's... and why she gets a right to be angsty. It was simply set up well that throughout, you grow sympathetic (and empathetic) for Jamie's character and her future path.

The characters, aside from Jamie, weren't well defined. I have no recollection of descriptive language for any of the characters - and other than the cover, I can't really picture what anyone looks like (because let's face it, there's a difference between Oprah and Michelle Obama wearing the same dress). I want to know if they're tall, short, are they athletic or just kind of average; are they white or hispanic? These things matter to me - not because I'm a judgmental asshole, but because I want to draw up what you look like in my mind. I want to picture Morgan, and not just in her red dress being classy. I want to know what my characters look like, I want to know where people stand in the larger picture of things. It was just kind of a disappointing part to this story. Also, why is the dad not involved in the story? (I mean, he is, but he really isn't.) Was there a specific reason that his absence was written in? There's a million other ways that could've been written, but I didn't feel like there was a clear reason as to why the absence was necessary.

This book was pretty rare as far as story lines go. I had some flashes back to Your Voice is All I Hear. I think there might have been one too many attempts at connecting characters in 60 different ways, but I felt, overall, that the story line was simple, it was to the point. It helped to make this a unique story that will stand out because of it's simplicity and ease about the characters. The writing style doesn't really take you anywhere, so to speak, but the story line helps you move from moment to moment. There were very few chapters that I felt were kind of aimless - but in the scheme of a 40+ chapter book, it's nice to know that less than 5% of those chapters were purposeful and provided a flow about it into the next point in the book.

I wish there would've been a little bit more psychobabble in all honesty. As believable as this book is (and maybe it's because it was written in 2002), I think the readers would've liked to hear a diagnosis; we wanted something firm. If you're not heavily invested in psychology and trauma reactions, you may not find this story believable. It may not make sense how one day some people are there, and the next they're not. Considering that Jamie was involved in therapy, she was admitted to a psychiatric hospital on lockdown (which I think was horribly written as far as believability goes, by the way), I wish we would've seen more of that, and maybe less of the back story. I didn't feel the relationship between Morgan and Jamie was so critical it needed to take up 15-20% of the book. I think we could've made them brief experiences (because they are important) and focused on Jamie's well being as opposed to focusing on Jamie and Morgan's relationship and connectivity.

The title of this book (once finished) makes sense. I kept asking, "But she didn't disappear." And then it kind of made sense. It actually led me to believe that Jamie was experiencing a different mental health problem early on. The title itself adds to the mystery and suspense of the novel. The cover art, however, wasn't all that great. It wasn't unique, it was just a picture of a girl.