Remember that time that you had amnesia and forgot everything that had happened? Right, that never happened. But it happens all the time on TV and in movies and books. Our culture is fascinated by the idea that someone could just forget something.
While You Were Sleeping, Overboard (a quirky fun take on amnesia that kind of seems criminal and icky with modern reflection), Total Recall, Momento (okay, not amnesia, but same idea). You get it.
And it has nothing to do with my review, but do you even know anyone who has actually suffered amnesia IRL? Like, comment if you do, I’m curious! And this has been deep thoughts.
From the Publisher:
On a cold, rainy morning, finance journalist Ally Linden arrives soaked to the bone at her Manhattan office, only to find that she’s forgotten her keycard. When her boss shows, he’s shocked to see her—because, he explains, she hasn’t worked there in five years.
Ally knows her name, but is having trouble coming up with much beyond that, though after a trip to the psychiatric ER, she begins to piece together important facts: she lives on the Upper West Side; she’s now a freelance journalist; she’s married to a terrific man named Hugh. More memories materialize and yet she still can’t recall anything about the previous two days. Diagnosed as having experienced a dissociative state, she starts to wonder if it may have been triggered by something she saw—an accident, or worse—or if a trauma from her childhood has risen to the surface.
Desperate for answers, Ally tries to track where she spent the missing days, but every detail she unearths points to an explanation that’s increasingly ominous, and it’s clear someone wants to prevent her from learning where those forty-eight hours went. In order to uncover the truth, Ally must dig deep into the secrets of her past—and outsmart the person who seems determined to silence her.
My Review:
When Ally “wakes up” from her amnesia, she has no idea what just happened and she’s surprised and a bit anxious to meet her husband Hugh – because she has no recollection of him either.
Before she leaves the hospital, she starts having memories come back. But when she finds out she is missing days, not just hours, she becomes a little obsessed with figuring out where those days went. And what she did. And who she saw.
As Ally tries to piece her life back together, it seems like everyone around her is acting suspicious. Her intern, Sasha, is weirdly trying to take over her job, her husband is acting shifty and kind of guilty, and even her encounters with her ex who found her at his office the morning she “came to” is acting weird.
Or maybe it’s just Ally?
I really love Kate White’s writing. This one was not my favorite of hers, but it was still mostly a good read. My only complaints are that I feel like there were a lot of loose ends that never got wrapped up and the ending felt just the slightest bit Scooby Doo to me.
The good points? Kate’s writing is amazing. It was a quick read, I enjoyed piecing together Ally’s journeys across NYC with a bit of a frame of reference (I was just there this fall), and I felt that hints of what was to come were subtle and well-placed.
Special thanks to Netgalley and Harper Packerbacks for an advance e-galley in exchange for my honest review. This one releases April 28, 2020. Get your copy.
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