Review: The Year We Disappeared: A Father - Daughter Memoir

The Year We Disappeared: A Father - Daughter Memoir by Cylin Busby

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Closer to a 2.5, this is the memoir of a family of a police officer who was shot at point blank range with a shotgun, his recovery, and the constant protection the family needed to be under while the crime was investigated. Half the story is written from the point of view of the officer's daughter, the other half from the point of view of the officer in question.

I'm not generally one for true crime or memoirs of victims of crimes - there usually has to be some sort of interesting hook or oddity to keep me interested, and the hook of corrupt police officers is ultimately unsurprising and uninteresting to me as a subject. The book isn't a total loss by any stretch, though - the tribulations of John as he recovers from the crime is well-documented and fairly matter-of-fact in its graphic descriptions, while Cylin's story as a young girl watching her world violently twist around her feels authentically written, which can be difficult. I just ultimately had a lot of trouble getting interested, and the resolution, as it were, being delegated to a quick note at the end didn't especially help matters.

It's definitely worth reading if this is your type of book. There just isn't a ton to set it apart compared to a lot of the other memoirs that exist out there.



View all my reviews