Dubi reviewed Remember Mia by Alexandra Burt
Review of 'Remember Mia' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
I was forced to take a week long break from reading in the middle of the book because life, so my impression of the book may have suffered from it. On the other hand, I'm happy in happened in the middle of this book, because I didn't mind, really. I didn't care for the characters, or the plot, or anything. I don't even know why I finished it. It was anything but, as the blurb on the cover said, "gripping".
The main plot device of the story is a trope. This does not make it necessarily a bad book, of course. Some stories take the amnesia trope and use it brilliantly. For others, amnesia is just a convenient little way to move the plot along. But here, for some unclear reason, it becomes central to the story telling. Pages upon pages are devoted to telling us about it, including even …
I was forced to take a week long break from reading in the middle of the book because life, so my impression of the book may have suffered from it. On the other hand, I'm happy in happened in the middle of this book, because I didn't mind, really. I didn't care for the characters, or the plot, or anything. I don't even know why I finished it. It was anything but, as the blurb on the cover said, "gripping".
The main plot device of the story is a trope. This does not make it necessarily a bad book, of course. Some stories take the amnesia trope and use it brilliantly. For others, amnesia is just a convenient little way to move the plot along. But here, for some unclear reason, it becomes central to the story telling. Pages upon pages are devoted to telling us about it, including even some ridiculous discussions of the science underlying it, to prove the author did her research. But when you actually look at the story, there is literally NO NEED for the amnesia. The story could have been just as good (not that it's good, of course) if it was told as a straight up story of a woman suffering from post-natal depression who thinks she's losing her mind when her daughter disappears.
The amnesia trick is good if you're going to reveal the details of the story out of order, so as to create suspense and confusion. But Estelle simply recalls everything in the order that it happened. Everything in between is sheer padding, with zero meaning for the story. There are some minor red herrings (the note, most obviously) which completely lack in credibility, so there's no real point to them. There is that obnoxiously long transcript of the TV interview which was literally cringe-worthy in how unrealistic it was... And that's it, really. None of this did anything to move the plot along one iota, nor did it help the reader have any sympathy to any of the characters. Completely vapid and pointless.
And that "Jenga stack of anguish" metaphor, I can't even...
So, all in all, a waste of time. If I had known the book's original title was "little girl gone", I probably would have recognized it for what it was - a pathetic attempt to jump on the Gone Girl bandwagon - before I even picked it up. Unfortunately, somebody forced them to change the name, depriving the readers from this excellent warning sign.
Let this be your warning, then.