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To celebrate Greta Woodrow's seventh birthday, her parents take her and her younger brother to the circus.  When Mike the Clown asks for a volunteer from the audience, all the Woodrows are shocked that James raises his hand.  The five-year-old is painfully shy, so much so that his mother is considering therapy for the odd child.  The family is even more astonished when James seems to be not just comfortable onstage, but also an effortless crowd pleaser.  When, for his final act, Mike the Clown makes James disappear, the audience roars its approval.  

The Woodrows can't wait to congratulate their son on his brilliant performance.  They wait for him to join them in the lobby.  And wait.  And wait.  And wait.  James is nowhere to be found.  Mike the Clown insists he never saw the boy after the big finale.  A search of the theater produces no clues.  James Woodrow has simply disappeared.  

As the days wear on with no sign of the missing child, the Woodrow Family slowly falls to pieces.  Greta knows it's up to her to find out what happened to her brother.  She uses her vivid imagination to conjure up scenarios that help her cope with the loss.  Still, the questions linger:  Where is James?  Did someone kidnap him or did he truly disappear in a puff of magical smoke?

The Disapparation of James by Anne Ursu starts with a simple question:  What if a circus vanishing act really worked?  The unsettling inquiry offers a fresh avenue for exploring the effects of loss on a normal, everyday family.  Still, this isn't not your average grief book—The Disapparation of James is undeniably odd.  It's also depressing.  Overall, though, it's a well-written, character-driven novel that brings something new to the table.  I didn't love it, but I found it very thought-provoking.

(Readalikes:  Hm, I can't think of anything.  Can you?)

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The back cover copy for Big Little Lies, Liane Moriarty's bestselling novel, describes the book so perfectly that I'm not even going to try to put my own spin on it.  I'm just going to give it to you straight:

Sometimes it’s the little lies that turn out to be the most lethal. . . .
A murder… . . . a tragic accident… . . . or just parents behaving badly?
What’s indisputable is that someone is dead.  

But who did what?

Big Little Lies follows three women, each at a crossroads:

Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. She’s funny and biting, passionate, she remembers everything and forgives no one. Her ex-husband and his yogi new wife have moved into her beloved beachside community, and their daughter is in the same kindergarten class as Madeline’s youngest (how is this possible?). And to top it all off, Madeline’s teenage daughter seems to be choosing Madeline’s ex-husband over her. (How. Is. This. Possible?).

Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare. While she may seem a bit flustered at times, who wouldn’t be, with those rambunctious twin boys? Now that the boys are starting school, Celeste and her husband look set to become the king and queen of the school parent body. But royalty often comes at a price, and Celeste is grappling with how much more she is willing to pay.

New to town, single mom Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for the nanny. Jane is sad beyond her years and harbors secret doubts about her son. But why? While Madeline and Celeste soon take Jane under their wing, none of them realizes how the arrival of Jane and her inscrutable little boy will affect them all.

Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands and second wives, mothers and daughters, schoolyard scandal, and the dangerous little lies we tell ourselves just to survive.

You've probably seen all the rave reviews this novel's gotten ever since it was published last year.  I'm always a little hesitant to trust hype, but in this case?  Believe it.  Big Little Lies is a hilarious, heartbreaking, spot-on story about the lengths to which we will go to protect our fragile images from the prying eyes of others.  It's compelling, compulsively readable, and a lot deeper than it seems on the surface.  Brilliantly crafted, Big Little Lies is one of those novels that simply should not be missed.

(Readalikes:  I can't think of anything.  Can you?)

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Maddie Flynn possesses a unique gift, although it feels more like a curse than a blessing.  When the 16-year-old looks at a person, she sees a date hovering near their head.  As a small child, she doesn't pay much attention to these random-seeming numbers.  It's only after her father dies—on the exact date Maddie predicts—that she and her mother finally understand what the numbers really mean.  Spying a golden opportunity to make a pile of cash, Maddie's alcoholic mom forces her to do readings for desperate clients.

When Maddie foresees the death—the date, not the cause—of a 13-year-old murder victim, she quickly falls under police suspicion.  As more teens are killed in a similar fashion, Maddie becomes their prime suspect.  Now, she and her best friend, Stubs, must find the killer not just to stop the violence and clear their names, but also to avoid becoming the next victims.

Although I've read about a million YA books with pretty much this same setup, I hoped the whole death date thing would set When by Victoria Laurie apart.  No such luck.  Its story and characters felt too familiar, too generic.  Add tell-y prose and gaping plot holes and yeah, it just wasn't that great.  I wanted something memorable.  When wasn't it.

(Readalikes:  Reminded me of The Body Finder series [The Body Finder; Desires of the Dead; The Last Echo; and Dead Silence] by Kimberly Derting and the Bang [Crash; Bang; and Gasp] and Wake series [Wake; Fade; Gone] by Lisa McMann)

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