And you think YOU'VE had bad first dates?...
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The Blurb:
One night can change everything. ‘I know it as soon as I wake up and open my eyes... Something is wrong.’ Her Saturday night started normally. Recently separated from her husband, Ali has been persuaded by her friends to go on a date with a new man. She is ready, she is nervous, she is excited. She is about to take a step into her new future. By Sunday morning, Ali’s life is unrecognisable. She wakes, and she knows that something is wrong. She is home, she is alone, she is hurt and she has no memory of what happened to her. Worse still, when she looks in the mirror, Ali doesn’t recognise the face staring back at her. She can’t recognise her friends and family. And she can’t recognise the person who is trying to destroy her…
The Review
If there is one thing I would ask publishers to stop doing it's using tag lines like this to sell books: "The unputdownable psychological thriller with a breathtaking twist", or "The next Girl on the Train", or "Insert cliche here and please buy our book!" I just think they are setting a book up to fail, and really, if you're reading a psychological thriller and not expecting a twist, you need your head examined.
Having said that, this doesn't do a bad job of living up to the hype. The premise is brilliant - not only your usual trope; 'Girl wakes up with no memory of night before, what on earth happened to her?' but this one has a gem of an addition. Imagine waking up, not recognising anyone around you AND not even recognising your own face??! Not only is this really creepy, it really helped the plot along.
I have a slight fascination with neurological disorders (blame the Psychology degree) so a thriller where the protagonist suffers from Prosopagnosia, the inability to recognise faces, was always going to really appeal with me. Couple this with the fact that now you're questioning during every interaction if Ali is talking to who she really thinks shes talking to and it gets super interesting. That really helped to make this much less predictable than other thrillers I've read recently.
Unfortunately this wasn't as fast paced as I hoped it would be and there were a lot of interactions that didn't add anything to the story for me. And yet I still came away not really understanding any of the relationships in her life. Buuuuuuttttt - everyone so far is really raving about this book, so once again I might blame this on my 'thriller fatigue' for not being quite so blown away by it as everyone else is.
Thanks to the Publisher and Netgalley for this preview copy in return for an honest review.