I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book. I don’t read lots of these psychological thrillers. However, this one surprised me. It is well written and nuanced, lots of layers that unfold. The story is about a 15 year old girl who is raped and receives a drug to erase her memories of the trauma, an interesting premise. The story is told by the psychologist who is treating her to help her remember enough to get past the trauma.
But that isn’t the real story, the real story is about what lengths you would go to to protect your child. I loved a paragraph in the book where the author describes how a parent’s job is to praise their children. How you need to tell them how wonderful their misshaped clay giraffe is, because the rest of the world is there to crush them and only parents can love unconditionally. Most of the people in the book are flawed and are hiding something from their past, there were no pretty childhoods for these adults. All of the parents (particularly the dads) attempt to to find the best way to protect their children – sometimes in unethical and illegal ways. I was extremely sympathetic to the victim’s dad, who struggled the most with his failure to protect his daughter.
The story take a number of twists and turns, but the plot is very tight. I thought I had it mostly figured out, but the final plot twists were a complete surprise to me.