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Book Description:

What would happen if you were visited by your younger self, and got a chance for a do-over?

Alice Love is twenty-nine years old, madly in love with her husband, and pregnant with their first child. So imagine her surprise when, after a fall, she comes to on the floor of a gym (a gym! she HATES the gym!) and discovers that she’s actually thirty-nine, has three children, and is in the midst of an acrimonious divorce.

A knock on the head has misplaced ten years of her life, and Alice isn’t sure she likes who she’s become. It turns out, though, that forgetting might be the most memorable thing that has ever happened to Alice.

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What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty is the book that made me break my rule of ‘don’t stay up late reading a book‘. I couldn’t help it – I was hooked on Alice’s story, and just could not make myself stop and take a break for sleep. And What Alice Forgot doesn’t even fall into the typical kind of book one usually stays up late for – you know, the high-octane thrillers or suspenseful mysteries or creepy horror books. Instead, it’s a simple but engrossing story about the evolution of relationships and family ties.

29-year-old Alice Love is one happy girl – she’s pregnant with her first child, she’s in love with her wonderful husband Nick, and they’re building a new life together in a challenging fixer-upper, with her protective big sis Elisabeth’s support. Then she wakes up (after hitting her head) into a nightmare. Alice learns that it’s actually 10 years later, she has three children she doesn’t remember, her beloved big sister is now a virtual stranger, and her husband Nick (the love of her life) is divorcing her! Alice doesn’t even like her older self – apparently, shy chocolate-loving laid-back Alice of 1998 would grow up to be an uptight, gym-obsessed, overly-organized supermom cum ex-from-hell in 2008 (with really, really fabulous clothes though).

I laughed, I cried, I empathized, I too wondered with Alice at all the mysteries in her new life (why did she and Nick break up? why do they hate each other? how did she lose touch with her big sis? who is this mystery girl ‘Gina’ that everybody tiptoes around?) Like I said, I was hooked and just kept on turning the pages, wanting to find out how Alice could fix her new life, dreading but also on tender-hooks to find out what happens when she finally gets her memory back. Will 2008 Alice be changed for the better? or not?

I thought Liane Moriarty did a fab job in breathing new life to the popular amnesia plot. Through Alice’s story, it allows the reader to wonder about how she would react in her place or even serve as a way to re-evaluate where one is in life. What Alice Forgot just totally resonated with me, and it’s definitely in the top books I’ve read this year. Can’t recommend it enough! Seriously, this is a must read 🙂

(The only thing I didn’t like with What Alice Forgot were the interludes where you get to read Alice’s big sis Elizabeth’s journal and her grandmother Fran’s letters. Yes, they shed some light on the Alice’s life from another perspective, but I found them very distracting to be thrown into someone else’s life while I’m still neck-deep in Alice’s)

What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty is available on Amazon as a Kindle edition ($11.99) and Hardcover edition ($14.86).

The eBook is also available at B&N, Sony and iBooks for $11.99.

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