I am so excited for this review, guys! I literally just read this book yesterday in one sitting and am still recovering from the feels. This post is going to get a little deeper than normal, because the topics tackled in the book are more serious but very important to discuss, specifically handling mental and emotional health across the board. I have done my best to be sensitive, but hopefully I can communicate myself well.

Introducing today's book on review, How to Disappear by Sharon Huss Roat. Here are the details:

Vicky Decker has perfected the art of hiding in plain sight, quietly navigating the halls of her high school undetected except by her best (and only) friend, Jenna. But when Jenna moves away, Vicky’s isolation becomes unbearable.

So she decides to invent a social life by Photoshopping herself into other people’s pictures, posting them on Instagram under the screen name Vicurious. Instantly, she begins to get followers, so she adds herself to more photos from all over the world with all types of people. And as Vicurious’s online followers multiply, Vicky realizes she can make a whole life for herself without ever leaving her bedroom. But the more followers she finds online, the clearer it becomes that there are a lot of people out there who feel like her— #alone and #ignored in real life.

To help them, and herself, Vicky must find the courage to face her fear of being “seen,” because only then can she stop living vicariously and truly bring the magic of Vicurious to life.

In this beautiful and illuminating narrative, Sharon Huss Roat shines a light on our love of social media and how sometimes being the person you think you want to be isn’t as great as being the person you truly are.

I actually checked this out at the beginning of December as part of my Instagram aesthetic, ended up not reading it, and had to return it. So my sister decided to read it and told me to read it too—I was blown away. I rarely say that I love contemporaries, but this one is a story that I've been looking for a long time.



For a contemporary, I was impressed by how clean it was. There were no sexual scenes and the cussing wasn't bad enough for me to put it down, although the characters did swear. There was a little bit of crude humor but I didn't think it was a huge issue. There was some kissing, but not super intense and overly frequent.



I absolutely loved the characters! It's pretty rare that I can say that about a whole cast, but what I liked about the story was that it didn't categorize "good" kids and "bad" kids. Some of the kids did mean things, but everyone had issues, and once I got to know them a little better, I felt empathetic because they were scared and needed help.

I loved everything about Vicky. She was fresh and fun, and awkward—that made her extremely relatable for me. Vicky has social anxiety, but she doesn't find that out until the ending of the book. So the entire time, the book relates her perspective with all of these scary thoughts coasting through her head, and they feel too natural and too real and too frightening. It was a little scary how easy it was to slip into her perspective and read as if I were the one experiencing everything. My favorite thing about Vicky is that, as much as she is hurting, she's trying to help everyone else because she doesn't want them to hurt either. That's really powerful and inspiring.

Lipton was just precious. He was awkward and nerdy, but in a really cute way. It made me ache every time he was scared he had done something wrong when he hadn't, but I loved he was trying to work around his mental health problems. I loved that he helped Vicky get up the courage to stand up for herself and talk to people. I also really enjoyed how he encouraged her to talk about her feelings, not keep them bottled up.

There were also some minor characters that surprised me. I really liked Beth Ann's rough yet kindhearted personality and Marvo's silliness. I even started liking Marissa after a while. Every mentioned character somehow contributed to the story, and Sharon was able to open my eyes to see everyone for their true identity.



The story was well-structured and lengthy, but gripping. It cycled through several ups and downs, and when I thought it would end, it didn't. Sharon clearly didn't have her focus on the story itself, but on taking plenty of time to let the reader get to know all of the characters. 

While Vicky had social anxiety, and Lipton had anxiety, it also focused on characters like Jenna and Hallie, who did not have any stated mental illness but were hurting. This book is about the emotional issues that are hidden in plain sight.

Sometimes I think we forget that everyone feels depression and anxiety at some point (or multiple points) in our lives. There's a societal assumption that we are happy all the time, because we seem happy. We're blind to what goes on beneath the facade. Across the board it's become so normal to ignore each other that we don't think about what each of us might be going through. We don't remember that suffering is painful, period. I love this book because it's about reaching out to everyone, mental illness or no mental illness. Everyone needs help, and this story was such a poignant reminder to reach out to everyone.



Knowing how someone with social anxiety thinks is something that I've been wanting to know for a really long time, and reading this made me realize that people diagnosed with anxiety are not much different from myself. Many of Vicky's thoughts were amplified versions of my own repeated a hundred times more often. The story brought my fears to the surface, and I teared up through more than half of the book. I could hear my heart pounding and I felt anxious for Vicky and her friends. It was very realistic to me, and scary. Everything about it hit so close to home for me.

Sharon's writing style is also very raw, but it flows well. Everything makes sense even if it doesn't seem like it's supposed to, and I wasn't confused at all, probably because I was so invested in the characters. I also loved her descriptive tactics and characterizations. The little details that usually get glossed over stood out, and it made the reading interesting and fresh. 




Hmmm...so here is where I'm going to get a little bit fangirly. I loved Vicky and Lipton's romance. They started so awkwardly, Lipton having a very obvious crush on Vicky and Vicky too nervous to realize it. Their awkward little exchanges were super cute and full of humor. For me, the best part was that it took them a while to actually fall in love. Their first date was adorable! *squeals* There were some parts where I thought it was a little unrealistic, and dang I wish I could find a guy as nice as Lipton. 😩 On another note, I just thought that it's worth mentioning how accurate Vicky's and Lipton's mothers' conversation was. #beentheredonethat The romance is definitely cute, but it doesn't take the focus away from the real message, and as far as I could tell it isn't a romance-fixes-mental-illness story either.


So is this actually my first five star book that I've ever reviewed??? I'm shooketh. On another note, I was so glad to be able to start 2019 off with such an amazing book. I would definitely recommend it to anyone 13 or 14+. So excuse me while I go re-read it. *snatches tissue box*