Review: CLOSE TO ME by Amanda Reynolds

Thank you so much to Quercus for my free advance copy – all opinions are my own.

Summary: 

When Jo falls down the stairs at home, she wakes up in the hospital with partial amnesia. In fact, she finds that she’s lost an entire year of memories, and she can’t remember anything that happened the night she fell. Her husband and her two children assure her that everything’s fine, but Jo’s family seems to have gone through a lot of dramatic changes in the past year, and she can’t let go of the suspicion that there’s more they’re keeping from her.

As she pieces together the details of the past twelve months, it becomes more and more clear that her family wants her to stay in the dark–but why? Jo begins to wonder if she hasn’t been as good a wife and mother as she might have hoped . . . 

“I have no frame of reference for what just happened and no idea what to do next. He’s my husband of twenty-four years; I thought I knew everything about him.”

My Review:

Let me just start by saying this book has a VERY slow start. It took me about 100 pages before I got sucked in but it was completely worth it. I was incredibly frustrated the entire time I was reading this novel but I believe that was author’s intention. I felt as if I was in Jo Harding’s mind as she was trying to figure out what happened during her lost year and what happened the day of the fall. The chapters alternate between days after the fall and months before the fall, up until you reach the point where the two collide.

As a reader you experience everything from Jo’s perspective. However, she relies heavily on her husband Rob and two children for much of her memory, so needless to say she is a very unreliable narrator. I found myself getting anxious because I needed to know how this played out. I needed to know what and when Jo would remember. But like I said before, the book is moves slowly at first, but definitely picks up the pace rapidly, and has a fantastic ending! I highly recommend for those who enjoy psychological domestic thrillers!

I rate this book 4 out 5 stars!