12 July, 2016

REVIEW: ALL IS NOT FORGOTTEN by Wendy Walker

Title: All is not forgotten
Author: Wendy Walker
Series: -
Genres: Mystery, Thriller, Trigger Warning
Publisher: Mira
Source: ARC
Pages: 384
Publication date: 12th July, 2016


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BLURB:
You can erase the memory. But you cannot erase the crime. Jenny's wounds have healed. An experimental treatment has removed the memory of a horrific and degrading attack. She is moving on with her life. That was the plan. Except it's not working out. Something has gone. The light in the eyes. And something was left behind. A scar. On her lower back. Which she can't stop touching. And she's getting worse. Not to mention the fact that her father is obsessed with finding her attacker and her mother is in toxic denial. It may be that the only way to uncover what's wrong is to help Jenny recover her memory. But even if it can be done, pulling at the threads of her suppressed experience will unravel much more than the truth about her attack. And that could destroy as much as it heals.

 
I received an ARC from Harlequin publishers also known as Mira for an honest review! Thank you very much!


 
This book is about rape and contains graphic descriptions!

THE WORLD: Just like we know it. It is a small town where everybody knows everybody and when the young girl is raped at the party people get anxious to find the rapist and put it all to past. However it is not that simple as the victim is given advanced treatment that deletes your memory of the event and so the leads are all gone.

CHARACTERS: Even so this book is about a teenager being raped at the party and it follows her journey recovering the terrible memory it really is about the psychologist who is treating the girl and her family. He is also our narrator in the book which gave it a very interesting angle as in a way he has God POV and at the same time he does not foresee things that are to happen. I absolutely adore this style, I think for this story it was just perfection. Plus, our narrator is also heavily flawed and so makes it easy to relate. Now the victim of the rape, Jenny Kramer is also a very interesting character. She is very brutally raped but shortly after the accident she is given medication that delete her memories of the event. Therefore, she wakes up without knowing why she feels scares and why her skin crawls. You see, as our narrator psychologist explained, you can delete the memory but the trauma is written down in bodies memory too which you cannot delete. So you end up not knowing why you feel the way you feel, as it was very well named in the book, you end up with the ghosts of the trauma that you cannot connect with the emotion. It is truly terrifying if you think about it. Additionally, to Jenny, psychologist is also treating her family - Charlotte and Tom Kramer. They are both flawed and full of secrets. But not the secrets you would see in Hollywood movie, actually in this book the story goes really deep and talks about very ordinary people, just like you and me. But the pace and the pathway it takes explains so many things you do not know unless you are psychology major. It was fascinating, I still need to good the author and if she is a psychologist herself of if she just did a very good research but for me as a person that has nothing to do with psychology...I took it as a real thing. Oh and frankly, there are some sociopaths involved as our psychologist volunteers at local prison and with that I am familiar (I used to have a very huge fascination with behavior analysis of sociopaths and so ended up reading a lot of biographic and forensic criminology books) and so yeah, I can tell you that at least this part where the psychologist analysis the mind and behavior of sociopaths is not made up. Anyways, there are of course some extra characters involved in the book but I do not want to go too much into detail, just take it from me that the characters in this book were very much at point and developed perfectly.

LOVE: This book does talk about the love and relationship itself and what human being needs and what not but there is no typical romance involved.

PLUS: I have not read so many trigger warning books but I wanted something else than YA and I have to admit, this was just a perfect pick. It is not disgusting or shocking too much but it does make you think a lot at the same time. I just think this whole book is one big plus.

MINUS: None, really.

OVERALL: I am giving this book 4.5/5 starts simply because I would have liked it to be a little bit longer. I loved the discussions about love, relationships and need for others. Plus the characters and the story itself...just one amazing package. I again must warn you about the rape being at the center of this book but if you are okay with that then go pick up this book because boy oh boy was it good!


 


What did you think of ALL IS NOT FORGOTTEN?