Book Review: All Is Not Forgotten by Wendy Walker

About the book:

Title: All Is Not Forgotten

Author: Wendy Walker

Published: 14th July 2016 by Mira

Amazon | Amazon UK

Blurb: In the small, affluent town of Fairview, Connecticut everything seems picture perfect.

Until one night when young Jenny Kramer is attacked at a local party. In the hours immediately after, she is given a controversial drug to medically erase her memory of the violent assault. But, in the weeks and months that follow, as she heals from her physical wounds, and with no factual recall of the attack, Jenny struggles with her raging emotional memory. Her father, Tom, becomes obsessed with his inability to find her attacker and seek justice while her mother, Charlotte, prefers to pretend this horrific event did not touch her perfect country club world.

As they seek help for their daughter, the fault lines within their marriage and their close-knit community emerge from the shadows where they have been hidden for years, and the relentless quest to find the monster who invaded their town - or perhaps lives among them - drive this psychological thriller to a shocking and unexpected conclusion.

Review: All Is Not Forgotten is probably one of the best and darkest psychological thrillers I have read in a long while. The premise for this story is highly interesting and controversial: what if you could erase your memory of a traumatic event just taking a pill? Would it help you or only complicate things farther as you still have the emotions but nothing to relate them to? With Jenny Kramer it seems that it did not work as good as everyone had thought...

The story is narrated mainly by Jenny's psychologist who is trying to help Jenny recover her memory and also helping her parents understand the whole process. So we know what he is thinking and why he does what he does as he explains everything in a very easy way to follow (even if it takes a while for him to explain certain aspects). Plus, there are some parts narrated in first person by the other characters so you get quite a clear image of what is going on in their heads. This makes for an incredibly addictive story as it jumps from one thought to another, from one time to another and from one character from another without following a clear order. I wanted to know everything at once but at the same time I wanted to stop and analyse every sentence and every new piece of information. 

As the story unfolds, it keeps surprising you in the most unexpected and clever ways. And nothing is as straight forward as you might have thought at the beginning. Also, if you are thinking of picking this book (do it!) be prepared for some uncomfortable scenes as the attack is described in graphic detail. 

Wendy Walker certainly has the capacity to not only captivate her readers but also manipulate them. The narrator turns out to be quite unreliable and there's a point in the story that you no longer know who to trust or what is really going on and I think that's what makes this book so compelling and unexpected. Every characters was well developed and played a crucial role in the story.

All Is Not Forgotten is a book you cannot miss. It'll play with you, shock you and confuse you but above all it will blow your mind. 

Rating: 5 stars