How To Disappear by Gillian McAllister
Published by Penguin
Publication Date: 9th July 2020
Genre: Legal Thriller
My thanks to Livvi Thomas at Penguin for the opportunity to be part of the blog tour for this book.
All opinions and thoughts expressed here are my own and unbiased.
Book Description:
You can run, you can hide, but can you disappear for good?
Lauren's daughter Zara witnessed a terrible crime. But speaking up comes with a price, and when Zara's identity is revealed online, it puts a target on her back.
The only choice is to disappear.
To keep Zara safe, Lauren will give up everything and everyone she loves, even her husband.
There will be no goodbyes. Their pasts will be rewritten. New names, new home, new lives.
The rules are strict for a reason. They are being hunted. One mistake - a text, an Instagram like - could bring their old lives crashing into the new.
They can never assume someone isn't watching, waiting.
As Lauren will learn, disappearing is easy. Staying hidden is harder . . .
My Thoughts:
Lauren is an extrovert; bubbly, loud, full of life and is never happier than when she is sharing photos online of her latest bargain from the shops or catching up with her sister to put the world to rights. Daughter Zara is the polar opposite: a bookish type, quiet and happy in her own company. She never felt like she fitted in with anyone really until she helped out at the local homeless charity and started chatting to the regular visitors out on the streets. Her desire for the world to be a fairer place, for the homeless community to be supported more and have a voice pushes her out of her comfort zone and she befriends a young man named Jamie. Then one day she is horrified to see her new friend become the victim of a vicious crime it becomes her mission to ensure she gets justice for him now he can no longer speak up for himself. Until the day of the trial when her house of cards tumbles spectacularly to ruins, putting not only her own life but that of her whole family -and others - at risk.
The decisions Lauren, Zara and their family have to make must be the hardest any family ever have to go through. Author Gillian McAllister handles the whole court case and the ensuing bombshells sensitively and from all points of view. Zara is young and very naïve; she thinks the situation will be solved overnight with the evidence she gave to the police. But the reality of standing in court and putting her version of events to a judge and jury is much harder than she expected. Lauren is there to support her daughter every step of the way yet finds herself questioning whether she and her daughter are strong enough to get through this together. Stepdad Aidan is my favourite character of the whole book. Is he right to make the choices he does? My heart broke for him as he faced the biggest challenge of his life in order to keep his own daughter and his extended family safe yet I wondered at times if he was being far too reckless in his actions. How far would any man go to put things right and have their loved ones safe again?
The research which has gone into this book must have been extremely difficult as the world of witness protection is clearly not something which the authorities are going to make public. How does it work? How much can they protect people? In a world where almost everyone has a digital footprint and with cameras everywhere you go it can't be easy to just disappear from your daily life then arrive elsewhere with a whole new identity that nobody can ever know is not real. We all have roots somewhere and it's not until reading this that I have really thought about how much of ourselves we share with other people on a day to day basis. Where do you come from? What school/college you went to? What are your interests and hobbies? Siblings, grandparents, cousins - all things we talk about with those we mix with all the time and don't give a second thought to.
This is certainly a book which makes you think. It would make a wonderful book club read as there are moral dilemmas and decisions to discuss all the way through. Its content is serious but without being a heavy read. The emotions I went through with each of the characters were surprising. The innocence of a teenage girl just wanting to do the right thing, the heartbreak her parents had to go through, the consequences Zara's actions had even for her step-sister then on the flip side, those involved in the initial crime, their families and the effects the court case had upon them - even the feelings of the official from the witness protection scheme were represented. I found this to be a very balanced and emotional read which had a far bigger impact on me than I expected it to.
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