What Alice Forgot - Liane Moriarty

Alice is twenty-nine. She adores sleep, chocolate, and her ramshackle new house. She's newly engaged to the wonderful Nick and is pregnant with her first baby.

There's just one problem. All of that was ten years ago . .

Alice has slipped in a step-aerobics class, hit her head and lost a decade. Now she's a grown-up, bossy mother of three in the middle of a nasty divorce and her beloved sister Elisabeth isn't speaking to her. This is her life but not as she knows it

Clearly Alice has made some terrible mistakes. Just how much can happen in a decade

Can she ever get back to the woman she used to be?

This is a book from personal shelf which I’m reviewing. I got this book because I was alerted by eReader on Facebook when it was at a good price. Today they have an alert on another Liane Moriarty book - The Last Anniversary for £1.19 - which I just downloaded :) 

I’ve never read any Liane Moriarty books before, but based on this one – I will be reading more in the future (now guaranteed!).

The premise of the book is that Alice has bumped her head aged 39, when she comes around she thinks she’s pregnant and aged 29.

For some reason I couldn’t get into my head that the book was set in Australia. The first reference being to the number to call for emergency services, but time and again I thought it was set in the USA, until the next reference popped up.  I’m probably just so used to reading a lot of books set in the USA.

What intrigued me most about this book is how the 29 year old Alice became the one everyone knew and seemed to hate in today’s world. How people had changed beyond recognition to her and that her own Mother was now married to her now ex-Father in law. There were also some great moments where Alice does not know about modern technology - what a “text” is for instance. At first I thought this was odd as it was only ten years ago, then I realised that the author had not set the book 10 years back from today.

One of the author’s devices for the dialogue was to use a blog written by Alice’s “Grandmother” which added a different and hilarious dimension to the book.

The other device used was to have a sub-story by Alice’s sister told through her “therapy” diary. This part of the book was actually quite sad, especially when Alice doesn’t remember what her sister has been through over the past 10 years. In fact I would say that this forms about half of the dialogue of the book and is far from a sub-story, touching on some very real issues.

Finally – imagine not remembering you had given birth to 3 children and not even knowing their names – a great plot for a book and one that will stay with me for some time.