Don’t Try To Find Me audiobook

** spoiler alert ** Meeting someone online and falling in love is wonderful. Yes, it is wonderful but not when you are fourteen and he is twenty-nine and has lied to you about a lot of things including his name.Marley met Brandon on a social media site, and he talked her into leaving her family and joining him for a life together. But...she couldn't take her computer, her phone, or even go out of the house once she arrived.As Marley traveled by bus to meet Brandon, on the other side of the country, her parents were frantically looking for her with no clues at all. Marley wiped out everything on all devices so no trace of where she was could be discovered.This nightmare was real for Marley’s parents, Rachel and Paul. They used social media to start a site named FindMarley.comThis book discussed a lot of social issues and showed the dangers of social media’s influence on youth as well as its ability to aid in getting cross-country exposure about a runaway.The characters were difficult to like. I wanted to shake Marley. I definitely disliked Brandon. I wasn't even fond of Rachel or Paul.But, despite the unlikeable characters, DON’T TRY TO FIND ME had me glued to the pages and had my heart racing. The suspense was quite high. My fear for Marley had me tense while I was reading the book as well as when I was waiting to return to see what was going to happen. I still am anxious as I am writing this...definitely the sign of a GOOD book.If you like to be kept on the edge of your seat, don’t miss reading DON’T TRY TO FIND ME. It was a quick read, but very intense. It could even be called a thriller.My rating is going to be a 4/5 because parts of the book were a bit too descriptive, but the anxiety and apprehension as each scene took place made it a terrific read.This book was given to me free of charge and without compensation by the publisher in return for an honest review.

Nose Graze — Book reviews & blogging tipsWow. Don't Try to Find Me is going to be a tough one to review! This book had so many different sides and layers; it's almost hard to absorb. It's also REALLY hard to talk about this book without spoilers. Those kind of reviews are always hard to write!There's one big part of the book that I need to talk about. I wouldn't personally call it a spoiler because it gets revealed before the 50% mark, but it's not mentioned in the synopsis. So I'll put it in spoiler tags and you can decide if you want it revealed or not! (view spoiler)[One thing I thought was super interesting was how Marley ran away to be with a guy she met online. Before meeting in person, they texted a ton and that's how they got to know each other. I could really relate to this because my fiancé and I met online! I fell in love with his personality before I even met him. Then when I did meet him, I loved him even more. But it didn't quite go that way for Marley. When she meets B., things aren't quite like how their texts were. He's more withdrawn and they didn't just instantly click like she thought they would. So I was fascinated to see the other side of the "meeting online" experience. It went brilliantly for me, but not so well for Marley! In her case, B. had one personality online, but he acted very differently in person, and that is what made her start to second guess her decision. (hide spoiler)]It was hard and fascinating to read the chapters from Marley's mom's point of view. I felt really bad for her and her husband (Paul) because they were clearly both devastated, and I wanted to cry with them! But on the other hand, I was constantly suspicious because of what the synopsis said. I kept imagining the worst, like one of them secretly abusing Marley or something. I didn't know what to think! But you could clearly see Rachel and Paul spiraling downwards and lose hope. They started out thinking Marley would be home in a few days or within the week at most... but when she didn't come home, Rachel in particular became an emotional wreck (understandably). Secrets began to pour out and I started second guessing everyone and everything!Most of all, I loved how this book made me think. I was absorbing everything! Marley was kind of a reckless teenager, but her journal entries did make me see her side of things and really feel for her. But then I'd read her mom's chapters and feel for Rachel too! I was so conflicted and didn't know who to actually support. But it was really sad to see Marley try to convince herself that running away was what she wanted. You could see the red flags there, and see Marley try to explain them away.. then it spiraled out of control. I was just really drawn into the way it was written. It was like watching something horrible happen in slow motion.My only real complaint about the book feels so awkward to complain about... and unfortunately, it's also a spoiler. (view spoiler)[I thought that the big reason Marley left home was going to be a lot bigger than it ended up being. And I feel horrible saying that, because it makes me feel like I'm saying anyone who wasn't raped or abused doesn't have "real problems".. and that's certainly not the case. But after all the build up and the fact that Marley actually ran away, I definitely expected there to be abuse of some kind involved. But it turns out, her parents just had a rocky marriage. Her dad wasn't a great listener, and her mom didn't try to get him to listen. And as a result of her feeling insecure in her marriage, Rachel kind of had an emotional affair and developed a small addiction to pills. I guess it just wasn't as scary and shocking as I expected it to be. I kept building it up in my head to be something REALLY horrible, like sexual abuse, or maybe emotional abuse. But in the end, her parents did really and truly love her and the problem was just that their marriage had been quietly falling apart. While that's certainly not a good thing, it doesn't seem like a truly horrible thing. (hide spoiler)]I think I almost had a morbid fascination with this book. Obviously the subject matter is pretty serious, but I was kind of addicted to it. I really wanted to know what happened and see the creepy bits unravel.. and maybe that in itself is kind of creepy of me! But overall it was a super interesting book and I definitely recommend it!

When fourteen-year-old Marley Willits disappeared, she left behind a brief and vague message on the whiteboard that stated "don't try to find me."From the message, the police conclude that there was no way to be sure she had gone voluntarily, so almost immediately, their questions seemed to zoom in on the possibility that someone else made her disappear. Perhaps even someone in the family.Paul and Rachel look like the perfect parents, but right away, Paul starts to look more perfect than Rachel, because he is aggressively creating a media blitz, including a website called FindMarley.com. And the interviewers seem to love him.Why does Rachel let him take over with his voice and his agenda, and dismiss hers? What is it about the relationship between these two that fuels the speculative comments and tweets? Is Rachel guilty of something? Or has she simply given in to the power of Paul's spin? Has the power dynamic in their relationship contributed to Marley's disappearance? What role, if any, does Michael, Marley's psychiatrist, play in what happened to Marley?Alternately narrated in Rachel's and Marley's first person voices, we learn more very slowly, as the story unfolds. There is something very similar between the two in how they choose to relate to the people in their lives. Is something more malevolent going on? Is someone manipulating each of them?Almost immediately I felt repulsed by Paul and the way he controlled everything, from the household to the media campaign. And in Marley's new world, the one she has kept secret, her new boyfriend has many of these same qualities. While I felt empathy for Rachel and Marley, I also wanted them to speak up and use their voices. I also began to realize that I was only seeing their versions of reality, and perhaps they were not the most reliable narrators."Don't Try To Find Me: A Novel" reveals what lies behind the facades: the secrets, the dynamics, the dysfunction. And the story seemingly springs from the headlines or a therapist's case files, and as a result, we begin to question everything about this family. And then we have to wonder how the narratives of others might be guiding them and controlling our perceptions of reality, too.An interesting journey, and while I wanted to find out the secrets and what was behind the facades, I started to feel a little manipulated, too. In the end, nothing was quite the way I thought it would be, and I felt a little cheated. But the author led the reader skillfully, showing us she is familiar with the terrain of family dysfunction. 4.0 stars.

As a mother of two little girls this book scared the hell out if me. Talk to your kids, be honest with them, trust them but monitor them and social media is just bad bad bad!!!!!

"Don't try to find me. I'll be okay. I'll be better. I love you."Those were the last words written to the parents of fourteen-year-old Marley Willits before her mother dropped her off at school. Only her mother didn't see them until she got home. Not quite sure what Marley's intentions might be, she had hoped this was merely a note telling her she'd be back later today. But the more Rachel thought about it, the more she began to fear that there was more to this note than the words she read. When she attempted to call Marley's phone, it simply rang where she had left it, sitting on top of the refrigerator. Not something a fourteen-year-old would do. Leave her phone behind. What if she really was running away? What if she didn't run away like the note seems but that she was forced to write it? What if her daughter was really in trouble?Rachel immediately calls her husband Paul at work and they agree this isn't something they should take lightly. After being seen by a psychiatrist three years ago, they thought Marley was improving. They had left the big city of San Francisco where they believed she was undergoing a lot of stress and peer pressure to a much small suburb and a smaller school. But was there something more that they were missing. Why would a fourteen-year-old suddenly decide that her perfect life wasn't all that she believed it was and simply left? Her parents had given her everything she could ever want. Money was certainly no object in their home. Her father, Paul worked hard to make a living but he was home every night, while her mother volunteered. So what were they missing? When checking all Marley's social media sites, they did notice she wasn't posting as much as most teens probably do, but then again perhaps Facebook and Twitter were now becoming outdated with teens moving on to other sites that their parents simply didn't keep up with. How would they ever find their missing fourteen-year-old daughter in a world where teens simply go missing all the time. All they know is that the more time that goes by, the odds of them finding her grow slimmer. I received Don't Try To Find Me by Holly Brown compliments of William Morrow, a division of Harper Collins Publishers for my honest review. I did not receive any monetary compensation for a favorable review and the opinions contained here are strictly my own. This is a chilling look at the outcome of what is happening to young teens all over the world. As parents get busy with the tasks of working and taking care of the home, teens are spending more time on the internet and we simply don't know who they are taking to or what is really going on in their lives. This novel is for mature audiences as it deals with profanity, sexual content and adult subject matter. It does provide parents with insight into taking more time and really understanding what our children and teens are doing behind closed doors as well as the things going on in their life and at school. It conveys what most parents hope they never have to deal with and gives you an opportunity to take inventory in your own home to prevent something like this from happening. I'd rate this one a 4 out of 5 stars simply based on my own personal rating system.

I would like to thank William Morrow/Harper Collins publishers for my advance reader's copy of Don't Try To Find Me. This novel was interesting to read and review, in part because it was not what I expected.Don't Try To Find Me is told in alternating chapters from the perspectives of Marley, a 13-year-old girl who is "missing," and her mother Rachel, who is desperately trying to find out what has happened to her daughter. Given the promotional comparisons to Gone Girl, Don't Try to Find Me was a lot less edgy than I thought it would be. However, this novel, which straddled the line between adult and young adult fiction, was still a pleasure to read. What I found most compelling about Don't Try To Find Me was the character development of Marley, Rachel, and the father and husband, Paul. They are all, in their own ways, trying to find themselves, as well as exploring how their relationships with each other may have led to Marley's disappearance. So to me, this book was more about relationships, self-respect, and identity, than about shock value or violence. However, this focus meant that at times, the discussions between Rachel and Paul, or Rachel's own muddled self-evaluation, seemed overlong. I definitely found the chapters narrated by Marley to be most intriguing. Her character, angry, smart, but also full of the self-doubt of being a young teenager, was relatable and easy to care about. Rachel, on the other hand, was so self-absorbed and scatterbrained, that I often cringed at her actions and thoughts. It's difficult to go into more detail about Don't Try To Find Me without giving away key elements of the plot, but what I will say is that I was surprised by how tame the story turned out to be. This is not to say that some truly terrible things did not occur, but, given the buildup at the beginning, as well as the reactions Marley and Rachel had to their experiences, I had expected things would get worse than they did. Especially in the case of Rachel, her own concept of how traumatizing her marriage was did not impress me. One reason I was initially attracted to Don't Try To Find Me was that promotional descriptions implied a cutting edge use of the internet in the novel. While emails and Facebook played a part in the story, social media was not utilized in any way that I found especially ground-breaking. For all this, I did enjoy Holly Brown's debut novel. My main critique, which is not one that I have often, is that it could have had more impact if it had played it less safe. I never felt much of a sense of true danger. More than anything, Don't Try To Find Me was a novel about finding oneself, and about growing up. In this, it was a satisfying read.

Guh. This book makes me not want to have kids. It stressed me out. You don't have to monitor everything your child does and take their door away but it helps to tell them the red flags of avoiding dangerous people. Like if a man talks about how every woman he dated screwed him over, sidle away. If he gets angry at you and calls you names if you don't answer his messages fast enough, avoid himAnd if he wants to date you when he is 28 and you're 14 avoid avoid AVOID!!!!

Rachel comes home from work to find a note in her kitchen from 14 year-old daughter Marley: don't try to find me. Rachel dropped Marley off at school in the morning but no one has seen her since. She calls her husband, Paul, and the two start making calls including the police. With a history of high anxiety, Rachel doesn't handle this too well and the cops suspect she may have something to do with Marley missing. Paul decides to go to social media and start a massive online campaign to find Marley. Told from the perspective of both Rachel and Marley, we get both sides of the story.There are many pieces to this book that makes it an interesting read. For me, I was surprised at how little I cared for the characters though I still felt somewhat sympathetic to them because of the tension Brown created with what may have driven Marley away. Rachel was annoying and a little hard to believe due to her inaction. For someone that has an anxiety problem, she was very perceptive about her relationship but completely oblivious in other areas. Without spoiling anything, we learn of one item about Rachel that drove Marley away and it was a complete shocker. There was very little in the book, until about 50 pages before revealed, that even hinted at this being a problem. Despite these annoyances, Rachel was a great medium for walking the reader through what a parent may think when their kid runs away. The other main character is Marley. Again, I wasn't her biggest fan because it felt like she may have run away for very little reason and I don't have patience for that. Despite this, she came off as rather mature for a 14 year old and able to handle herself in adverse situations.What this book really excelled at was making the reader's mind work in overdrive to figure out why Marley ran away. With each revelation I was wondering who could have done what to whom and what the final reason for the family abandonment was. That said, once the real reason was finally provided, because my mind had been working so hard to come up with all of these reason, I felt like it was a bit of a let down. I expected the reason to be larger than it was.This book was a page-turner and had interesting character narration. I just would have liked the author to push the envelope a bit more on the conclusion because the journey didn't equate to the end result.

Don't Try to Find Me was definitely a psychological journey of a broken family into nightmare territory. The story is told from the point of view of mother/daughter alternately. Paul and Rachel had grown apart over the years, but they thought they were providing their daughter, Marley, with all the advantages she could ever want or need. They even provided her with a therapist when she needed clarity and mental health care. The parents were split on that issue. Paul saw no point to a therapist and only attended one session. Rachel, however believed it was helping her daughter and formed a strong friendship with the therapist. Marley's perception of the relationship between her parents and the relationship between her therapist and her mother is what breaks her further. With only the support of her secret facebook friend, she plans her escape into a new "family"--just the two of them.This was a very intense read as Rachel and Paul come to grips with the problems they knew existed but for whatever reason could never confront. Under public scrutiny after turning to social media to find Marley, nothing was sacred or "secret" any longer. But at least they did have a unified cause....find Marley. Second guessing one another, second guessing the motives of those closest to them in the search, and trying to second guess Marley led to a lot of angst and revelation, until there were no more secrets.This story was relevant and pertinent to the world we live in today, where the vulnerable are sought out and found by predators, through the same social media Marley had been both lost and found. The story moved fluently, and this reader was invested in the read immediately. Characters were frustrating and believable. The storyline and plot, both frightening and so sad. Broken people, broken family--and so much rested in the perception of said family members.

How would you feel if your kid ran away and specifically told you to not even bother looking for them? Don’t try to find me written by Holly Brown is a fictional book about a teeneger, Marley, who decides to run away from home and leaves a brief and vague message on a whiteboard telling her parents to not try to find her. As a teeneger in today’s society there is pressure all the time and there are social norms on who you should be. Also there is a constant feeling of not feeling valuable enough. Marley, being an insecure fourteen year old, connects with a random boy online and he makes her feel loved and superior. Just like many teenegers today, Marley does not have a positive relationship with her parents. I can relate to how she feels because numerous times when I am fighting with my parents I feel like I’m the smallest person in the world. Feeling like her parents don't care about her propelled her to leave home. The boy she met online, Brandon, makes her feel like she is the most vital girl in the world. Brandon is someone who persuades you into doing something you don’t want too. He is like your parents. He brainwashed her with the thoughts that her parents are disgusting people and to run away and spend her life with him. Just like any other fourteen year old girl, she is still very lost on her identity. The average number of teenegers that run away every year is 1.7 million. This runaway story gave an insight on how parents react when their kids run away from home. Usually parents of runaway kids have the feeling like it’s their fault their kids ran away. Marley’s mom has the constant feeling of hopelessness just like she is locked in a prison cell with no way out. Overall I recommend this book to anyone who likes mystery books and wants to grasp what goes on in the mind of a teenage girl.

For as long as I can remember I have always loved my Mysteries and Crime stories but for me to enjoy them, they have to be intriguing and fast-paced and hold my interest right the way through otherwise they can become quite boring and start to blend in with all the others I have read. This book I had been looking forward to reading as it sounded like something up my alley and it was a really good read and if you love mystery novels then you will enjoy this too. It reminded me a cross between Jennifer Egan's Mystery Novels and the book Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight - two books I enjoyed also. In Don't Try to Find Me , Marley is a fourteen year old girl who has run away from home and left behind a message for her mother and soon becomes the hunt for Marley and where she might have gone. We soon discover that the relationships between Marley and her parents have been strained and that things behind closed doors haven't been what they seem and of course we all know that appearances can be deceiving. It turns out that Marley has run away to be with a guy she met on the internet , but is he really what he says ? When you don't know who to turn to anymore , who can you trust but the one you have fallen in love with ? This novel follows the 3 week period of Marley's disappearance and is told in two POV's . The POV of Marley and what she is experiencing and her adventures and the POV of Marley's mother Rachel and what she is going through as of course secrets are being spilt and it seems the public are pointing at Rachel as the reason her daughter has disappeared.If you are needing a fast-paced mystery novel and wanting something different to read and loved Reconstructing Amelia, then check out "Don't Try to Find Me" by Holly Brown and once finished, this is an author you will be wanting to add to your keeping-an-eye on list.

I received a free, pre-release copy of this book as part of the GoodReads First Reads program.I'm not completely sure about the rating for this book. It was highly emotional, of course, since it deals with a troubled family and a missing child. So much so that there were points where I almost couldn't read it (I have trouble with the endangered child plotline).In addition to the emotional roller coaster (yes, I did cry at points, thank your for asking) there were some very nice motifs between how mother and daughter reacted to things. There were some interesting observations on relationships, and some excellent handling of shades-of-gray situations. Not to say that there aren't also some clear 'good guys' and 'bad guys' within the story, but no one was completely pure, and no one was bad just to be bad. Given the nature of the story, that's pretty hard to pull off.Not going to say how the plot wraps up. There are definitely parts I found very difficult to read, but I'm glad I saw this one through all the way to the end.I will be processing this one for some time to come, I believe.

This book is a lesson on keeping an eye on your children. We think that we know what they do on the computer and their phones, just because we have their passwords, and are their "friend" on Facebook. This is a reality check for parents.I think the content in this book is so excellent that it should be recommended reading for parents who think they know what is going on in their children's lives.It is time for parents to wake up!! Monitor your kids on the computer. Do they really need a smartphone? Kids do not need every new electrical device that comes on the market. Kids need and WANT actual "face time" with their parents ~ no matter how much they protest.

** spoiler alert ** While in parts the book seemed to move slowly, it does take you on a ride of emotions in dealing with an array of scenarios. From runaway teens to catfishing/grooming to a marriage that seems to have run its course. I did enjoy reading, however out didn't really challenge me...buy I also couldn't put it down, finishing it in a few hours. Definitely interesting, but may not be everyone's cup of tea. Told from two points of view, we get to see how the big picture is sown back together.

Started off slow but got much, MUCH better!