This was my first Sophie Kinsella book, and I wouldn’t say no to reading more, even though this was mostly just an okay read for me. For about the first third or so, I didn’t even really like it, but by the end I was invested. I probably wouldn’t have picked it up for a long time, if ever, except that I pulled it out of my TBR Jar (that thing has been really helpful in cleaning up my shelves, by the way).
This book has a similar plot to another book I’ve owned for years and haven’t read, What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty, which is also about a woman who is knocked on the head in some fashion and wakes up with amnesia, having forgotten years of her life. (I have a suspicion the Moriarty book will be more to my taste.) Here, Lexi has forgotten three years, which honestly was strike number one, because SO MUCH happens in her life and she changes SO drastically in what seems like a pretty short period of time. One or two more years added to that would have made it more believable, I think. (What Alice Forgot has Alice forgetting *ten years*.)
Lexi wakes up in the hospital thinking she’s twenty-five, that she’s dating a guy called Loser Dave, she can’t drive, has snaggly teeth, and didn’t get a bonus at work. In reality, she’s married to a handsome millionaire called Eric, owns a Mercedes (that she crashed, thus causing her amnesia), runs her former department at work, and seems to have a reputation as a bitch boss from hell. The tension inherent in Lexi not recognizing her life or who she’s become is good, but it’s such a drastic shift that it’s also hard to wrap your head around.
It doesn’t help that Lexi comes off as kind of an idiot. I think Kinsella might have been going more for “confused and brain damaged,” but that’s not how it plays. And again, if all these drastic changes had happened in four or five years I might have bought them, but it was only three years, and we find out later, she actually changed the most drastically towards the beginning of those three years.
About halfway through, I started enjoying myself. Maybe because Lexi starts catching a clue and being proactive, but also because it became clear the book was striving towards Lexi reevaluating her life, and we also learn that not everything as it seems.
Spoilers.
I still don’t really buy the reason given, that she became money and power crazy and upended her life, just so she could help pay off a secret mortgage her dad took out on her mom’s house before he died, but the sentiment put forward that she had made mistakes and bitterly regretted them sort of worked anyway. It’s relatable. I didn’t like that pre-memory loss Lexi cheated on her husband with Jon rather than just leaving him. That was a dick move on both their parts. But the way their relationship was written made me feel for both of them, and I was happy for them in the end. It also helps that after memory loss, Lexi chooses not to be with Jon after she leaves Eric, because she doesn’t want to jump from one stranger to another.
The only other thing that stood out to me was that this book felt pretty dated in places, but I didn’t keep notes on examples or anything.
All in all, not sorry I read it! But not my fave.