How did I get it?:
I borrowed it from Beth!
Synopsis:
She can’t remember the last year. Her husband wants to keep it that way.
When Jo Harding falls down the stairs at home, she wakes up in hospital with partial amnesia-she’s lost a whole year of memories. A lot can happen in a year. Was Jo having an affair? Lying to her family? Starting a new life?
She can’t remember what she did-or what happened the night she fell. But she’s beginning to realise she might not be as good a wife and mother as she thought.
Thoughts:
Beth is basically one of the biggest book pushers in my life. Ha! She recommended Close To Me after reading it and enjoying it earlier this year. I’m pleased that I read it because I thought it was a wonderful debut novel. It gripped me from the very beginning and I was eager to find out what was going to happen next.
Close To Me centres around our main protagonist Jo. Jo has had an accident which results in her losing her memories of the past year. This leaves Jo questioning what has happened and why her family don’t seem to be telling her the truth. Jo is convinced that her grown up children and her husband are keeping things from her, but with only snippets of memories coming back to her, she doesn’t know what to believe anymore.
Although this isn’t the most unique psychological thriller that I’ve read, it was still an engaging and exciting read. I was eager to find out about the secrets that were being hidden. I wanted to know whether Jo had fell down the stairs or whether she was pushed. I was questioning every single thing, not sure whether to distrust Jo’s family or not. There were just so many questions to be answered!
The narration goes between Jo’s point of view in the year that she had lost and Jo’s present day life. Using this narrative was effective because the reader got to learn about Jo’s life before the accident. I liked this element of the story as it meant that the reader could learn about Jo’s past as the memories were revealed to her too.
I didn’t think much of Jo’s family. I couldn’t really warm to any of them. I didn’t trust some of them and I wondered why Jo’s children weren’t more concerned with her memory loss! I found Sash (her daughter) in particular to be a very irritating character. I desperately wanted her to be there for her mother… and she just wasn’t!
There may be many books like Close To Me in the genre, but it’s an addictive read and a very promising debut nevertheless!
Would I recommend it?:
Yes! 3.5 stars
