My Rating ~ Four stars

RELEASE DATE: 16 July 2019

Publisher: Ashland Creek Press

Format: Paperback

Pages: 316

Received from: Smith Publicity

Blurb

Leaving behind a nomadic and dangerous career as a journalist, Sarah DeVaughan returns to India, the country of her childhood and a place of unspeakable family tragedy, to help preserve the endangered Bengal tigers. Meanwhile, at home in Kentucky, her sister, Quinn–also deeply scarred by the past and herself a keeper of secrets–tries to support her sister, even as she fears that India will be Sarah’s undoing.

As Sarah faces challenges in her new job–made complicated by complex local politics and a forbidden love–Quinn copes with their mother’s refusal to talk about the past, her son’s life-threatening illness, and her own increasingly troubled marriage. When Sarah asks Quinn to join her in India, Quinn realizes that the only way to overcome the past is to return to it, and it is in this place of stunning natural beauty and hidden danger that the sisters can finally understand the ways in which their family has disappeared–from their shared history, from one another–and recognize that they may need to risk everything to find themselves again.

Review

Thank you so much to Smith Publicity for providing me with a copy of Three Ways to Disappear, in exchange for an honest review.

Sarah and Quinn are sisters who grew up in India, but were returned to America by their mother after a terrible family tragedy. Years later, Sarah decides to head back to India, to work with a foundation protecting the dwindling tiger numbers. As Sarah tries to fit in with local customs, while battling the dangers they pose to her, she experiences the wonder of love – for both the tigers that seems particularly drawn to her, and a man with who a future seems impossible.

Part conservation story, part family drama, Three Ways to Disappear pulled my heartstrings in so many different directions. I loved the way the story explored the different ways multiple family members can react to the same family tragedy, and what keeping secrets can do, especially when you don’t have all the information. I originally wanted to read this book because of the tigers. I love tigers and have read a few books in the past about their decline in certain parts of the world. I adored those parts of the story, as heartbreaking as some of them were, but I didn’t realise how much I would love the human aspect. From the diverse personalities to the difficult lives many of the people in the small Indian villages experienced, it really drew me in as the story progressed.

Quinn’s son has a life-threatening illness that rules Quinn’s life with anxiety and fear. I really felt for her and could completely empathise with the way she must have felt. Knowing we can’t protect our children from life itself, doesn’t make it any easier to let them take risks sometimes. Watching the vastly different sisters slowly repair the bond they almost lost as children was as beautiful as watching Sarah attempt to save the tigers.