This book is set in a small town where everything seems perfect. That is, until the night that Jenny Kramer, a young teen, is attacked at a party. Because the assault is so awful, her parents make the decision to give her a controversial drug that will medically erase her memory of the event. However, in the weeks afterwards, Jenny struggles with her raging emotional memory. Her parents are at opposite ends; her father becomes obsessed with finding Jenny's attacker and her mother does her best to pretend nothing happened at all.
Enter the doctor who works with Jenny, trying to recover her memory so she can completely heal emotionally from the attack. He has has success helping other patients, so maybe he can help Jenny. Question is, is this doctor somehow involved in her attack?
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Well, I definitely won't forget that I read this book. I found it got progressively more disturbing, and while that didn't keep me from turning the pages (because I so wanted to find out who was involved in the rape), at the same time, I felt like I maybe didn't want to keep reading. This is a psychological thriller with a nasty tone underneath, which I found enjoyable, but at times kind of repellent. The narration of the novel is interesting, where you get someone who is just outside of the main events, and giving us the viewpoints of other characters, sometimes as seen through his own emotional lens.
What I found interesting is that our narrator, Dr. Alan Forrester, is not the most likeable guy. So, you have this awful attack, and then your main perspective is from someone who isn't likeable, and who doesn't really improve much throughout the story. Instead of becoming a more sympathetic character, I found that he became more unlikeable. If you want to read another reader's opinion of this guy, check out the review on Goodreads from reader Emily May. She writes, for example,
"Problem is, this guy is an insufferable douchebag. And no, I don't mean he's a flawed, interesting character prone to human vices like selfishness and jealousy. I mean he's a smug, pompous know-it-all who slut-shames, patronizes his wife, and wants to see the rape in Jenny's eyes. "
I felt this was an interesting book, and I definitely felt the author kept me on my toes wondering who was involved in the assault. When the reveal comes towards the end of the book, I felt like I had been sucker-punched (which was fine -- I'd rather not be able to predict everything in a story). This might make for an interesting book group choice, just because I think there would be a lot of things people might want to talk about after reading the book. Do I want the book on my own shelves, to read over and over again? Not really, although it was an interesting book, and maybe something I'll get from the library again at some point.
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