I was completely blown away with Wendy Walker's debut, All Is Not Forgotten, a couple of years ago, so I was very curious to discover her new story, Emma in the Night. Here are my thoughts on it:

Title: Emma in the Night

Author: Wendy Walker

Published: February 8th 2018 by HQ Stories

Amazon | Amazon UK

Blurb: Two sisters go missing. Only one returns.

Getting people to believe you is easy.

If you tell them what they want to hear.

When my sister and I disappeared three years ago, they found Emma’s car at the beach. Some people believed she had gone there to find a party or meet a friend who never showed. They believed that she’d gone for a swim. They believed that she’d drowned. Maybe by accident. Maybe a suicide.

Everyone believed Emma was dead.

As for me, well – now I’m back to tell our story.

You’ll have to see if you believe it.

Review: If I learned anything from Wendy Walker's debut novel, All Is Not Forgotten, it was not to trust the narrator, so when I first started reading about Emma's story, told by her younger sister Cass, I was doubting everything she was saying and trying to find holes in her narrative. 

I was not the only one doing that though. FBI Forensic Psychologist Dr Abigail Winter, who was assigned to the case when the sisters first disappeared, was also keeping a very close eye on Cass and her story. Some of the chapters were actually told from her point of view, so I found it really interesting to read how a professional psychologist was following the young girl's story. 

But this story was not only about Cass and Emma's disappearance. It delved into the girls' past and their family, especially into their mother. We soon discovered that she was not the loving mother she wanted people to believe but a narcissist. I found the information about this disorder really interesting, and the descriptions of how it affected the family dynamics were shockingly detailed. 

Although this story didn't hold my attention as mush as I would have liked, as I found the pace to be a bit too slow and not that surprising at times, it did deliver a very interesting and shocking story that made me want to continue reading until I unravelled it all. 

I would like to thank the publisher for sending me a copy of this book. This is my honest opinion.

Writing About Sexual Violence by Wendy Walker

When I began to write the crime scenes for my thriller, All Is Not Forgotten, I knew I was walking a very fine line. On the one hand, I wanted the reader to understand the severity of the crime my young protagonist survived. On the other hand, I was writing about the one crime that causes extreme discomfort – rape. How do I do this? I struggled with the question. How do I describe the rape of a fifteen-year-old girl? 

A thought came to mind. Maybe I could just say it was a violent rape and let readers fill in the blanks with whatever details they could tolerate. But then another thought came on its heels. Isn’t every rape violent? Why is it we can tolerate extreme depictions of other violent crimes like stabbings, shootings and torture, but not rape? Is it because rape involves the act of sex? Are we still unable to see the wall between sex and sexual violence?

I decided to do more research. I read the stories written by survivors. I read medical reports about injuries, and psychology papers on treatments for PTSD. I also read articles about injustice in rape prosecutions. And I learned as much as I could about what rape is, what it does to a body, what it does to a mind. 

After wrestling with this dilemma, I decided to write about the rape as if my protagonist were stabbed or shot or bludgeoned. I chose to describe her injuries as I would with any violent act. The message from survivors came through loud and clear. All rape is violence. They write in great, descriptive detail of each moment. They use the words vagina and genitals and bruising and brutally thrusting and penetration. They describe the loss of their integrity, their virtue, their identities. And they tell us what they feel when it’s happening and when it’s over, and for years to come. These are the words they want the world to hear, whether they make us uncomfortable or not. 

Maybe we need to get uncomfortable so we never lose sight of that wall between sex and sexual violence – so there is no doubt about what rape is and what rape does.

One in four women know the answer. What does it mean to be raped? I turned to the words written by those who know, and I chose those words so that the rest of us might better understand.

About the book:

Title: All Is Not Forgotten

Author: Wendy Walker

Published: 14th July 2016 by Mira

Amazon | Amazon UK

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This feature was created because they are particularly fond of lists over there at The Broke and the Bookish. And who doesn't love a good list?

This week’s topic is your ALL TIME favorite books from a certain genre. I decided to pick my favourite thrillers because it's a genre that I only started reading in the last couple of years but one that has completely blown me away. 

The Missing by C.L.Taylor.  Another amazing psychological thriller from C.L. Taylor. It is so cleverly written and so absorbing that I completely forgot about everything else while reading it. Unmissable.

In Her Wake by Amanda Jennings. This will definitely be one of the psychological thrillers of the year. It is for me the author's best yet. It held me captive in its atmospheric pages for hours and I just kept telling myself one more chapter until the early hours of the morning.

The Girl in the Ice by Robert Bryndza. This is Robert Bryndza's first psychological thriller and what a thriller. Robert managed to create such a dark atmosphere that actually gave me shivers while reading it.

All Is Not Forgotten by Wendy Walker. I only read this one this summer but it completely shocked me. What a controversial story. I just wanted to read it all at once to know everything.

Silent Scream by Angela Marsons. This is the first book in the D.I. Kim Stone series and by now everyone must have read it already (if you haven't, you are missing out). I'm completely addicted to this series and completely in awe with Angela Marsons' writing, with every new story it just gets better and better. 

I'm sure you've heard about All Is Not Forgotten. The campaign behind this book has been huge and it's probably going to be one of the psychological thrillers of the year, but is it any good? Yes, it is! Check out my review to know more. Also, I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Wendy Walker for the Blog Tour of this book (check it out here).

1) Hi Wendy and welcome to Alba in Bookland. First, can you tell us a bit about yourself?

My name is Wendy Walker and I live in Connecticut, which is just northeast of New York City. I went to college at Brown University and law school at Georgetown University. I spent one year at the London School of Economics and I got to travel all around Europe. I have had many jobs from waitressing to investment banking at Goldman Sachs, to commercial litigation and now family law. I have three teenage sons and a large extended family. 

After I had my first son eighteen years ago, I decided to stay home to raise my children until they were all in school. I felt lucky to be able to do that and so I took the job very seriously! But after about a year, I started to feel unfulfilled so I started to write whenever I had free time (which was not very often!). I had two more children in five years and all the while I kept writing. I even wrote in the back of my minivan while waiting for them at pre-school! I felt like a time scavenger, especially after I found an agent who thought she could sell my work. Of course, life is never that straight forward! It was a long road and 17 years getting to the writing and publication of All Is Not Forgotten. During that time, I published other novels, edited, and eventually went back to work as a lawyer (after 14 years away from the field). The work I found was in the area of family law and it was a wonderful fit for my life experience. I practiced for five years, eventually opening up my own practice which focuses on consulting.

I am currently writing almost full time- but my doors are still open and I still have a few clients.

2) All Is Not Forgotten is about a teenage girl whose memory of a violent assault is medically erased with a drug and its consequences in her life. I found this idea very original and controversial. Where did your inspiration for it come from?

I read an article years ago about the emerging theories in memory science and the treatment of PTSD with drugs that can lessen the emotional impact of a trauma memory. I thought at the time that this could lead to significant moral, ethical and legal questions if such techniques were offered to victims of crime. When I decided to write a psychological thriller in 2015, I thought this concept would offer readers a great deal of substance. I started to do research and discovered that this area of memory science had just exploded and that drugs were now being developed with the hope of mitigating, reconsolidating and even erasing trauma memories. I developed the characters and plot in a way that I hoped would explore this fascinating topic.

3) How did you research this? 

Much of my initial research was done reading articles and research papers available on the Internet. There was an incredible amount of information, from detailed articles summarizing the research findings to the actual findings as they were reported in various science and medical peer journals. I then had relevant parts of the manuscript reviewed by neuroscientist Dr. Efrat Ginot, PhD, who was finishing her book The Neuroscience of the Unconscious: Integrating Brain and Mind in Psychotherapy, and Dr. Felicia Rozek, PhD, who is a practicing therapist with experience with children and adult trauma. 

4) What difficulties did you face getting inside Jenny Kramer's head to tell her story?

Really, it was not difficult. I think the teenage years are so fraught with anxiety and anticipation and big decisions and social conflict, that we all remember what it felt like. I was able to get inside her head on this basic level, and from there it was a matter of drawing on empathy (which is a major theme in the novel). I think if we imagine what it would feel like to be in someone else’s shoes, and then draw from our own painful experiences, we can come pretty close to understanding the emotions of others. I also read a lot of material from rape victims and therapists discussing their treatment so I could better understand the emotional torment that is specific to sexual assault. I wanted to be as authentic as I could on this issue, while also keeping in mind that Jenny did not remember what happened to her so her journey would be different in that respect. 

5) If you found yourself in a similar situation, would you choose to remember or to forget?

I think I would choose to remember. But I would also take full advantage of the wonderful treatments that can mitigate the emotional pain that is attached to the factual memory.

If I had to choose for my child … I honestly do not know. I think that is what makes this topic so compelling.

6) All Is Not Forgotten has all the ingredients of the perfect Psychological Thriller: tense and fast-paced with an unreliable narrator. Could you tell our readers what else this book has that makes it stand apart from the crowd?

What is different about this novel, I think, is that, first, it deals with a very real world controversial issue. I believe that we will be faced with decisions about treating our traumas and being able to choose, not only to lessen their emotional impact, but to forget or alter their facts. Every one of us can imagine having to make this choice – either for ourselves or for a loved one, a child.

Second – All Is Not Forgotten has many subplots that are highly relatable to our everyday lives. There is the Good Charlotte/Bad Charlotte theme. The dynamic between Charlotte and Tom and how it plays out in their marriage. The issues around parenting and the things we would do to protect our children. And the friendship between Jenny and Sean and how people who have suffered in the same way have a bond that transcends gender, age and pretty much everything else. All of these issues are things people face in their own lives and I think that makes this book thought provoking as well as entertaining.

And third – the structure of All Is Not Forgotten is unique. I designed it to move in different directions, backwards and forwards and sideways, but in a fluid, conversational way. It was my goal to grab the reader, make him or her stop everything else, put away computers and phones and televisions, and focus on the characters and the story and emotions they contain. I think we are moving, as a world culture, toward more complex and non-linear forms of entertainment. Because of the overwhelming amount of devices and applications, we often have numerous inputs running all at once. We can follow them all if they are simple and moving in a straight line. But I think this takes away from the pleasure of certain types of entertainment, such as television drama, film and books. Most of us want to be so engrossed in a story that we live and breathe it and forget our own lives. Entertainment is about escaping and feeling things we don’t normally feel. To that end, I was very much inspired by some of the newer films and television dramas that have captivated audiences with their multidimensional deliveries. We see the plot from years ahead, and years behind. We see the characters in the past and present and future. And we have to piece together the plot using the clues given to us. This forces us to be engrossed and occupies every part of our brains and in the end we do escape because we cannot follow the story if we don’t give it our full attention. I know something is good when I have to shut my computer screen (and with it facebook, twitter and my three email accounts!). All Is Not Forgotten attempts to create that feeling of total escape by telling the story in a way that is new, but that feels as seamless as an engrossing conversation with a friend.

7) About your writing process: Are you a plot planner or do you prefer to just write and see what happens?

I am a plot planner for sure! For All Is Not Forgotten, I had different colour note cards for each plot line. I kept them in order and then layered them into each chapter. When I read through the first draft, I kept a list of facts that each character learned or revealed and I wrote down numbers next to them as they occurred in the book. I also went back into the manuscript several times to layer in more pieces of the back story for each character to add substance and depth. Their stories consumed my mind entirely for many weeks and new ideas would come throughout the day and night. I would write them down and then go back in and add them when I had time. 

8) You began your writing career writing Women’s Fiction – what compelled you to switch across to the genre of Psychological Thrillers? 

My first two published novels were called Four Wives (2008) and Social Lives (2009). These books were in the genre of women’s fiction and involved stories of women in wealthy suburbs struggling with their identities, marriages, children, and former lives. I have lived in suburban Connecticut most of my life, both as a child and a grown woman, and I find it fascinating! Here, many women quit their highly skilled jobs to take care of homes and families while their husbands work long hours and travel for jobs in finance. This always made me think about Betty Friedan and her seminal work, The Feminine Mystique. I built my plots around these themes of economic dependency and the division of labour within families where both partners are highly skilled and educated.

After I started practicing law again, I never gave up the dream of making a career as a writer. I used to tell my boys that it was important to always have a dream, but to also be responsible. I did not stop working as a lawyer. But I also managed to keep writing! I signed with a new agent and she loved my concept of a psychological thriller based on memory science. I was a bit nervous about switching genres, but I had always enjoyed suspense and thrillers and I was very interested in this story concept, so I dusted it off and wrote All Is Not Forgotten. It was great advice and I am so glad that my children may get to see my dream come true (fingers crossed) so that they will believe what I told them about having dreams and never giving up – even if you have to keep your day job!

9) Finally, can you tell us what you’re working on now?

Yes! I am working on my next psychological thriller. Here is a little bit about it:

Five years ago, two sisters disappeared into the night. Now, one has returned to tell the dark story of years spent on an Island off the coast of Maine. As the FBI searches for the Island and the sister who did not make it out, we learn about the twisted past the girls endured in their own home before they left - and the truth about where they have been comes under scrutiny. Through the voice of our narrator, the sister who has returned, and the testimony of the Bureau’s forensic psychologist, the stories of past and present converge in an unexpected ending.

Like All Is Not Forgotten, this novel has an original narration structure and complex plot that is intended to capture the reader’s attention from the start and not let go until the entire story is told!


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.