Thursday 20 June 2019

Book Review and Blog Tour: FORGET MY NAME by J.S. Monroe

Author: J.S. Monroe
Publisher: Aria Books
Read: June 2019
Expected publication: out now
My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟


Book Description:




She arrived at the train station after a difficult week at work. Her bag had been stolen, and with it, her identity. Her whole life was in there – passport, wallet, house key. When she tried to report the theft, she couldn’t remember her own name. All she knew was her own address.

Now she's outside Tony and Laura's front door. She says she lives in their home. They say they have never met her before.

One of them is lying.

My musings:


Amnesia is a popular theme for a mystery, and I can rarely resist the pull of such a premise. It is such a terrifying thought, not being able to remember who you are, or where you have been, and if well done, usually makes for a good read! However, it is also a tricky theme to pull off, and I usually go in fully expecting to have to suspend disbelief in parts to make things work. This is where it gets tricky for me, because I am really bad at doing just that!

We know from the blurb that a young woman turns up at a private house in Wiltshire, claiming that she has no idea of who she is, other than that the house seems familiar. Concerned about the stranger’s welfare, Tony and Laura, the owners of the house, offer her a bed for the night until she can get help. As the story unfolds, we learn that the young woman, who now calls herself Jemma, a name given to her by Tony, has both retrograde as well as anterograde amnesia, which means that she cannot remember the past and is also unable to form new memories. It may make for an intriguing premise, though I have known people with traumatic brain injuries who had that affliction, and let me tell you, it’s no picnic in the park. Imagine eating a meal and then not being able to remember having eaten. Every place is strange, because you can’t form any memories of having been there. Everyone is a stranger, because you can’t form the memories of ever having met them. Terrifying! Of course, this level of disability would not work well in a novel, so Jemma’s affliction is much less extreme than that. So even though some things may have been modified for the sake of entertainment, it still makes a good recipe for an unreliable narrator. Who is Jemma? And what does she want?

J.S. Monroe sure knows how to write a twisty, original thriller, and if you go in expecting entertainment rather than a life-changing story about someone with amnesia, then you should enjoy this one. There are twists and turns galore, a bunch of unlikeable, unreliable people with different agendas and a great mystery at the heart of it: who is Jemma? The atmosphere gets a lot darker and more menacing towards the later part of the book, at which stage you will have a pretty good idea of where it is heading, except perhaps for .... No, I will not give anything away here. Let me just tell you that there was one sinister element that managed to gobsmack me. I will never be able to look at one of my favourite sea creatures again without thinking of this story. Ugghhh!

Whilst Jemma battled with her damaged memory, I struggled with my own affliction, the suspension of disbelief, trying to silence the little nagging part of my logical brain that constantly questioned things. So if you are a reader who likes all threads to link up and all elements to be scientifically correct, then you may feel some of the frustration of the little devil on my right shoulder whispering questions in my ear throughout. But I won’t give anything away here, because the story hinges on it surprise elements, of which there are many. Points for totally blindsiding me – I really had no idea where this was headed, and the final reveal came totally out of left field.



Summary:


If you are looking for a fast-paced, original and entertaining thriller that holds quite a few surprises, and can overlook a few little holes in the story, then you have come to the right place! 


Thank you to Aria Books for the free electronic copy of this novel and for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.

2 comments:

  1. I can generally overlook the odd inconsistency, if the rest is engrossing enough. I quite like the sound of this, thanks for sharing your thoughts

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    Replies
    1. Thanks, Shelleyrae! I think this would be a fun read for most people, I am just a bit jaded with thrillers with far fetched plots at the moment and probably should have a little hiatus from them to be able to get the fun factor back.

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