contemporary Archives - Page 2 of 7

Yzabel / May 21, 2019

Review: Magic For Liars

Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey
My rating: [usr 3]

Blurb:

Ivy Gamble has never wanted to be magic. She is perfectly happy with her life—she has an almost-sustainable career as a private investigator, and an empty apartment, and a slight drinking problem. It’s a great life and she doesn’t wish she was like her estranged sister, the magically gifted professor Tabitha.

But when Ivy is hired to investigate the gruesome murder of a faculty member at Tabitha’s private academy, the stalwart detective starts to lose herself in the case, the life she could have had, and the answer to the mystery that seems just out of her reach.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

A mystery where Ivy, a private investigator, has to address a potential murder in a magic school, where her own twin sister Tabitha is a teacher—her sister, who was gifted with magic, while herself wasn’t. That’s a recipe for disaster, or at least, for tense relationships and/or resentment.

And I enjoyed, indeed, the out-of-balance relationship between the two sisters, based on a lot of unsaid things, feelings and resent left to simmer for years, with each contending with a difficult event in a way that made the other sister believe they didn’t care, or not so much. Well, it was especially imbalanced when Ivy was concerned, since she was the one at home when the said event occurred, and had to live through it with the feeling that Tabby was too busy with her studies. But this long-festering resentment also came hand in hand with a wistful, half-buried, never fully admitted, desire for magic as well: Ivy telling herself she’s fine as she is, that she doesn’t want magic, can never really hide the regret that magic separated her from her twin. A good chunk of the story deals with this complicated relationship, as well as with Ivy wondering “what if” (what if she had been magic, too?), and seeing herself as the woman she never was, and that she probably wouldn’t have minded being. Along with her investigation, this leads her to spin more and more lies: some appearing as necessary, to throw the potential culprit off-balance while Ivy is fishing for clues, and some that are, let’s say, less justified, if not by her feelings.

On the other hand, there were times when Ivy came off as wallowing in self-pity a little too much for my liking, and when she became unsympathetic rather than touching. So the character development and relationships were interesting in general, though tedious at those times I mentioned.

The magic itself is not all stars and sparkles, and this makes it more interesting than neat spells and wand-waving. First, it can be pretty gross. Healing spells, for instance, are gruesome and difficult, and only the best mages can attempt them without killing themselves or their patient. And there’s also something twisted and petty to the way some of the students use their magic—one of the things Ivy reflect upon: they could do so much with it… but they’re still teenagers wrapped in their own drama, and so use it in a very self-centred and sometimes mean way.

The mystery part was where I think the novel wasn’t as strong as it could’ve been. The crime itself is one of magic (not a spoiler—you see the discovery of the body in the first chapter), and this, of course, throws additional difficulty in the path of our investigator, since she’s not familiar with spells and with what mages can or can’t do. Which is partly why she needs to do so much fishing. Yet at the same time, I felt that it lacked tension, that Ivy wasn’t as threatened as she could have been. And the clues were either something she stumbled upon (so not exactly screaming “investigation” here), or so subtle that they were really difficult for a reader to spot. Not to mention some parts of the ending. Some things were left unfinished, and while I do enjoy an open ending, here something was missing—some closure when it came to certain characters and facts, who/which were in fact sort of… brushed aside as “that was bad and they did a bad thing and oh it’s the end, bye.”

Conclusion: 3 to 3.5 stars? I quite liked this novel, but it’s a like” and not a “love” here.

Yzabel / April 8, 2019

Review: The Department of Sensitive Crimes

The Department of Sensitive Crimes: A Detective Varg novel by Alexander McCall Smith
My rating: [usr 1.5]

Blurb:

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo introduced us to ‘Scandi noir’. Now, welcome to Alexander McCall Smith’s world of Scandi blanc . . .

Ulf Varg works in Malmo’s Department of Sensitive Crimes. Like all Scandinavian detectives he has his issues. In his case these include his unresolved feelings for his colleague, Anna; his impatience over the seeming incompetence of his irritating colleague Blomquist; and his concerns for the health of his hearing-impaired dog, Marten, the only dog in Sweden (and possibly all Scandinavia) who is able to lip-read (in Swedish).

Along with his colleagues, Ulf is called upon to investigate a bizarre attack on a market trader, the disappearance of a handsome man who may or may not exist, and the affairs of a variety of young female students whose relationships with one another leave a great deal to be desired.

Ulf and his team come to realise that the world is a puzzling place, lycanthropy (were-wolfism) exists and fish might have something to teach us. There is so much to learn if you are a Swedish detective, and in the first book in this new quasi-Scandinavian series, Ulf Varg embarks on these lessons with spirit and good humour.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through Penguin’s “First To Read” program, in exchange for an honest review.]

I thought this would be the introduction to a series with investigations a little on the strange side, and quirky characters. The cases indeed had a bit of oddity (a man knifed at the back of the knee, a boyfriend who may or may not exist…), but I didn’t enjoy the characters and their interactions much.

I think the breaking point for me (well, not really a point, since it kept going on throughout the whole novel…) was the way their thoughts and conversations were meandering. In a way, they surely did mirror how our thoughts in general go from A to E through convoluted paths and associations of ideas; the problem is that this doesn’t translate very well into written form, unless perhaps you’re called James Joyce, and even then, I wouldn’t bet on it systematically. As a result, the characters took their sweet time getting to the fact, and to be honest, I found that their reflections about their own lives intruded all in the wrong places, such as between two paragraphs pertaining the investigation. The amount of useless dialogue lines kept breaking the flow of the story, and didn’t endear me to said characters.

Another problem was the nature of some of those conversations, taking gratuitous jabs at people: reflections about the size of a policewoman’s buttocks (such a professional conversation, that), or calling a secondary character a midget, or being not even vaguely sexist—even coming from the female investigator, Anna, when she addresses the matter of the young woman in the second “crime”, and declares “Hormones come into it” (to which Varg agrees with a heartfelt “Don’t they always?”). I mean… No? Just no? Was this really necessary? What was it meant to achieve?

All in all, I was disappointed here. I was expecting a sort of quirky, adorkable atmosphere, but it felt at best bland, and at worst somewhat rancid.

Yzabel / February 26, 2019

Review: Louis & Louise

Louis & Louise by Julie Cohen

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

ONE LIFE. LIVED TWICE.

Louis and Louise are the same person born in two different lives. They are separated only by the sex announced by the doctor and a final ‘e’.

They have the same best friends, the same red hair, the same dream of being a writer, the same excellent whistle. They both suffer one catastrophic night, with life-changing consequences.

Thirteen years later, they are both coming home.

A tender, insightful and timely novel about the things that bring us together – and those which separate us.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Interesting concept, but one that could’ve gone further, and didn’t.

The novel tells the story of “Lou”, who in one life was born a girl, and in another a boy, and takes them through events of life that aren’t always the same, nor with the same outcomes, depending on the character’s sex.

I enjoyed the characters in general, whether the main one(s) or their best friend and parents, and the parts of the narrative where they had to come to terms with the impending death of a beloved one: the latter came, in one case, with heavy baggage of secrecy and forgiveness that could potentially not be given, which is always a delicate theme to explore. (Or, at least, it is for me, because it’s never all black and white, and the part of me that feels the character should not forgive constantly clashes with the other part, which isn’t a vindictive one. I’m not a very revengeful person in my own life, after all.)

While it was a quick read for me, and I liked following Lou’s path overall, I wasn’t awed, though. I think I was expecting more out of it: more of the many subtle, day-to-day ways society enforces gender stereotypes, for instance. The novel has some, such as Louise starting to wear contact lenses as a teenager because “you’d be so much prettier without glasses”, or her grandmother chiming in with “ladies don’t do this and later you’ll marry and have children because that’s what girls do”, but those were more tiny bits lost in the narrative. I also felt that some parts resorted to easy shortcuts: the corresponding gender stereotypes for Louis were mostly the oh so typical “are you gay or what” (there are so many other ways gender stereotypes are enforced for boys), and Louise’s “catastrophic night” event was… so expected that I guessed it just from the blurb. (Someone please tell me -that- is not the only dark/striking event a woman can have in her life… I mean, no such event at all would be better, of course, but there are so many other possibilities, and I believe one should’ve been tackled here, instead of resorting to the obvious choice.)

Conclusion: 2.5 stars. It is a pleasant read, one that raises valid points and lends itself to reflection, but for me, it took the easy road, where it could’ve explored so many other paths.

Yzabel / September 21, 2018

Review: Sadie

Sadie by Courtney Summers

My rating: [rating=4]

Blurb:

A missing girl on a journey of revenge and a Serial-like podcast following the clues she’s left behind.

Sadie hasn’t had an easy life. Growing up on her own, she’s been raising her sister Mattie in an isolated small town, trying her best to provide a normal life and keep their heads above water.

But when Mattie is found dead, Sadie’s entire world crumbles. After a somewhat botched police investigation, Sadie is determined to bring her sister’s killer to justice and hits the road following a few meager clues to find him.

When West McCray—a radio personality working on a segment about small, forgotten towns in America—overhears Sadie’s story at a local gas station, he becomes obsessed with finding the missing girl. He starts his own podcast as he tracks Sadie’s journey, trying to figure out what happened, hoping to find her before it’s too late.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

This was quite a gripping story, that for once I felt like reading more slowly than I usually do, perhaps because I kept dreading the next “Sadie” chapter, not knowing where it would take me… or, rather, suspecting where it would, and not wanting to see whether I was right or not. Why I do that to myself, I have no idea.

The mixed format, alternating between Sadie’s first point of view and the script of a podcast about her and her sister Mattie, worked pretty well for me. I’m usually a good enough audience for those novels that play with different formats, and this one wasn’t of the kind that tries too hard or think it’s so much more clever than it really is. “The Girls” is reminiscent of a true crime narration, and Sadie’s parallel narration puts everything back into perspective every time, adding heart to the more neutral tone of the podcast (although West McCray, the podcast’s “narrator”, is fairly involved—in fact, I’d say his involvement is similar to what I was feeling: he, too, wants and doesn’t want to know what he’s going to find).

Sadie’s story is both touching and sad. Here’s a girl who doesn’t have much—her mother’s an addict, she stutters and people make fun of her because of that, she doesn’t have friends, or money, or prospects… the kind of person that, too often, no one would really care about, because she’s not important enough, or was “looking for it”, or whatever similar tripe. She has a fierce love for her younger sister Mattie, and what happens to the latter devastates her to the point of taking her to the road in search of the truth.

In a way, the double narration is part of her life, too: while West keeps searching, there’s always that feeling that he’s not doing enough, not going fast enough, not digging deep enough, and you want to tell him “hurry up, we’re nearing the end of the book, find her before…”. After the abuse she’s suffered, you want someone to take care of her, not the way her surrogate grandmother did (Mae was her support as she was growing up), but as support in what she’s doing now, in her current odyssey as a girl become an adult much too soon, and who’s trying to right a wrong (and save other people) even if it means suffering so much herself. Because Sadie could’ve given up any time, turned back any time, and she doesn’t: it’s not only about Mattie, but about the others, too.

Conclusion: A slow read for me, as it was kind of painful and I kept dreading turning the page… but that’s also what made it a good book. Scary, creepy, horrifying, for the worst monsters are the ones who look human… but definitely a good book.

Yzabel / August 19, 2018

Review: If Cats Disappeared from the World

If Cats Disappeared from the World by Genki Kawamura

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

Our narrator’s days are numbered. Estranged from his family, living alone with only his cat Cabbage for company, he was unprepared for the doctor’s diagnosis that he has only months to live. But before he can set about tackling his bucket list, the Devil appears with a special offer: in exchange for making one thing in the world disappear, he can have one extra day of life. And so begins a very bizarre week . . . Because how do you decide what makes life worth living? How do you separate out what you can do without from what you hold dear? In dealing with the Devil our narrator will take himself – and his beloved cat – to the brink.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

An enjoyable read with an important message about the value we give to life, what we do with our lives, and what we’d be ready to sacrifice to extend them. Confronted to the prospect of dying very soon, in the next few months if not the next few days, the narrator is offered a bargain by the Devil itself, and a tempting one at that: for each thing he erases from the world, he gets to live one more day. Which quickly raises a lot of questions and conundrums, because if it’s worth earning more life time, it has to be a sacrifice… but if we sacrifice too much, is it worth keeping on living?

The chapter with the talking cat was well done, too: first because of the cat’s voice, second because he was very… feline (those bipeds never understand anything to cats, do they?), and third due to his selective memory, something that was sad, but also a reminder that we don’t know how animals think, and what we take for granted may not be what is important to them.

I did find the story too predictable, though, in that the message was obvious from the beginning, and completely expected considering the type of stories it usually goes with. There’s no real twist, nothing I didn’t see coming, and no ‘revelation’ either, if this makes sense—other novels on a similar theme already did it, and this one doesn’t go far enough with the associated tropes to rise above them all. (I also think that the Devil imposing choices about what to make disappear removed the possibility of things going awry because of the narrator: ‘he made me do it, so it’s not my fault’. I prefer when my protagonists make their own mistakes, and then atone for / learn from them.)

3.5 stars.

Yzabel / June 20, 2018

Review: Thirteen

Thirteen by Steve Cavanagh

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

Murder wasn’t the hard part. It was just the start of the game.

Joshua Kane has been preparing for this moment his whole life. He’s done it before. But this is the big one.

This is the murder trial of the century. And Kane has killed to get the best seat in the house.

But there’s someone on his tail. Someone who suspects that the killer isn’t the man on trial.

Kane knows time is running out – he just needs to get to the conviction without being discovered.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book from NetGalley.]

Hmm… The premise sounded interesting, for sure (the killer’s not on trial, but in the jury!). However, the execution made it a little too far-fetched to my liking.

I didn’t know the ‘Eddie Flynn’ series before—this is actually the fourth book, although it’s not a problem: it reads as a standalone, and whatever background you need to know about Eddie (ex-con artist, estranged family…) is mentioned soon enough for a reader not to be confused at some missing backstory. I also quite liked the character himself, who in spite (or perhaps because of?) his past displays a strong moral fiber, and doesn’t abandon his clients even when everything conspires against them. Maybe he had a slight tendency to boast sometimes, but nothing too bad.

On the other hand, many of the other characters were really one-dimensional, almost caricatures: the famous lawyer who pulls out as soon as the deal’s not so juicy anymore, the prosecutor who’s only interested in fame and winning all his trials, corrupt cops… I was hoping that things would go differently with the jury consultant, since Eddie and him didn’t like each other, but acknowledged their respective skills and made efforts to work together; alas, this didn’t come to pass.

Most of all, I had trouble with the killer’s part of the story. He was too much of a villain with everything going for him: special abilities, smart, always prepared, always one step ahead, with contacts on the inside, able to bug the lawyer’s office, etc. There were no flaws in sight, nothing I could really use to build hypotheses as to what would be his downfall… And yet, paradoxically, even with all those aces in his sleeves, Flynn was still able to guess he was on the jury. I think this would’ve gone down better for me if it had been Kane’s first time only; his plot is quite complex, and interesting. But as a repeat plot, it didn’t work for me—his successes vs. what happens in the novel don’t add up.

Writing: The book was a fast read, not difficult to follow at all even if you don’t know much to US law procedures. The writing style was OK in places, annoying in others (too many short sentences will kill the rhythm just as much as too many long ones). There were typos, too, but I don’t know if I got technically an ARC, or the final copy; if they’re in the final copy, it’s not good.

Yzabel / April 23, 2018

Review: Home

Home by Amanda Berriman

My rating: [rating=4]

Blurb:

Meet Jesika, aged four and a half. She lives in a flat with her mother and baby brother and she knows a lot. She knows their flat is high up and the stairs are smelly. She knows she shouldn’t draw on the peeling wallpaper or touch the broken window. And she knows she loves her mummy and baby brother Toby.

She does not know that their landlord is threatening to evict them and that Toby’s cough is going to get much worse. Or that Paige, her new best friend, has a secret that will explode their world.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley. ]

This started as a bit of an annoying read, due to the ‘child voice’ narrating it—it wasn’t so easy for me to get into it. Jesika is a difficult narrator to contend with, in that, on top of being unreliable because she sees the world through her own filters, those filters are very much naïve and different from an adult’s. The way she perceives and interprets events wasn’t always easy to follow, and the fact that the words she used weren’t necessarily the right ones didn’t help. However, after the first couple of chapters, I got used to her voice, and I didn’t notice its ‘quirks’ anymore, or at least not in a way that disrupted my reading. Which was, of course, a good thing.

The story itself deals with difficult themes, too, that aren’t completely visible at first due to the aforementioned filters. But don’t mistake those for callousness: because Jesika seems ‘remote’, this actually makes events more… raw, in a way, in the absence of adult filtering. The reader soon gets to realise the issues Jesika’s family is facing: poverty… but not enough to really get help; having to contend with shady people; illness, probably due to their dire living conditions; and, of course, what comes later, once Jesika meets Paige and starts to wonder if what’s happening at her home is normal or naughty, and if she should tell her mother Tina, and won’t her mother stop loving her if she does that? (And that’s the biggest fear for her child: being rejected by their parents…)

Although the novel never veers into sordid (I don’t want to say that Jesika’s narration revealed Paige’s secret in a ‘cute’ way, because it’s not cute, it’s never cute, it’s creepy AF and no child, well actually no one, should ever have to go through that—but it did soften the blows in a certain way), it wasn’t exactly an easy read. Jesika and Paige are both so very young and vulnerable, all the more when one remembers that getting through the regular babble of children at such a young age can be exhausting, and doesn’t leave much room for actually listening, really listening to them when they try to convey something serious. I did enjoy the grown-ups’ reactions around Jesika, though, since they did take things seriously. There was a particular moment, for instance, when Tina could’ve done the coward thing, could’ve chosen to ignore the signals, because acknowledging them sort of put her at risk, too. There are so many stories, so many happening in real life, too, when unfortunately people close their eyes on the obvious and choose the easy way out.

At the same time, the circumstances Jesika, her mother and her baby brother have to face aren’t all in shades of black only. There are people around who’re ready to help them, and once Tina manages to get past her pride and accept those outstretched hands, she realises that friendship and trust are things you can find even when everything looks bleak. There could have been darker consequences, and in fact, it’s good there weren’t, considering the story’s themes are already dark enough as it is.

Conclusion: 3.5 / 4 stars.

Yzabel / February 24, 2018

Review: They Both Die At The End

They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera

My rating: [rating=3]

[I received a copy of this book through Edelweiss.]

An alternate-world story where a company named Death-Cast informs people of their impending death, and in which a lot of aspects of society are built around this: ‘Deckers’ (those people who got eh alert that they have less than 24 hours left to live) get meals , night club entrance, etc. free; a lot of blogs get devoted to chronicling their last hours, as they go about trying to make the most of what they have left; and an app, Last Friend, allows people to connect so that they’ll be able to spend that time with someone. (It is to be noted that because D-C only announces the day one is meant to die, and not the causes, a lot of Deckers try not to stay with close friends and relatives, in case their death will be due to a terrorist attack, car crash, or any other type of circumstances that could wound those other people.)

The novel follows two teenagers, Rufus and Mateo, as they meet through Last App and get to live their last day together, making memories, becoming friends, realising what they missed on, but also becoming the people they would’ve liked to be—in a somewhat paradoxical twist, in that perhaps they would never have done that, and perhaps never even known who they wanted to be, had they had their whole lives still ahead. I found this story dealt with its themes in a touching but never depressing manner. I would’ve been very miffed indeed if it had been about moping and lamenting; obviously the two boys aren’t happy about it, but they go around trying to make the most of it, trying things they may not have done on their own, and so on.

Of course, as the title explicitly says, the reader knows from the start that they both die at the end, and part of my interest in this was also to find out how they’d die, if it would leave them enough time to grow into that friendship I was promised, and whether events unfolding around them would indeed be the ones leading to their demise, or not.

I enjoyed the characters in general. Mateo’s way of gingerly opening up to braver actions was adorkable. Rufus had the making of a ‘bad boy’ but also revealed he definitely had a heart of gold. How they go about their last day was empowering. And I also liked the minor characters whose point of view I got to see as well. They were diverse (in many ways, including background, ethnicity and sexual preferences—by default I tend to consider every character as bi unless proven otherwise, cheers for Rufus here), and they allowed me to get a glimpse into the other side, what the living had to go through when confronted with the knowledge that their best friend had received the alert, and what D-C employees and related people also get to feel. (I don’t think spending your career as a customer service rep announcing people they’re going to die before tomorrow is very healthy in the long run.)

For some reason, though, I wasn’t a hundred percent invested in the book. To be fair, I suspect that’s partly because I was invested in interesting non-fiction books at the same time, and those demand more focus and attention from me. But I think that was perhaps also because of the theme: very interesting, yet necessarily leading to ‘live your life to the fullest because you’re not immortal’. Which is true, and expected, and because of this, it makes it hard to deal with it in a way that hasn’t been done already. Another thing I wasn’t sold on was the more romantic involvements; I think full-on friendship would’ve worked better for me.

Conclusion: Perhaps not a definite favourite for me, but I’ll happily pick another story by this author in the future.

Yzabel / January 26, 2018

Review: Paper Ghosts

Paper Ghosts: A Novel of Suspense by Julia Heaberlin

My rating: [rating=1]

Blurb:

An obsessive young woman has been waiting half her life—since she was twelve years old—for this moment. She has planned. Researched. Trained. Imagined every scenario. Now she is almost certain the man who kidnapped and murdered her sister sits in the passenger seat beside her.

Carl Louis Feldman is a documentary photographer. The young woman claims to be his long-lost daughter. He doesn’t believe her. He claims no memory of murdering girls across Texas, in a string of places where he shot eerie pictures. She doesn’t believe him.

Determined to find the truth, she lures him out of a halfway house and proposes a dangerous idea: a ten-day road trip, just the two of them, to examine cold cases linked to his haunting photographs.

Is he a liar or a broken old man? Is he a pathological con artist? Or is she?

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley.]

I had liked ‘Black-Eyed Susans’ by the same author well enough, and I thought I’d like this one as well, but unfortunately, it wasn’t the case. As evidenced by the time I needed to finish it, that wasn’t because I had too much work and no time to read, but because it kept falling from my hands and I’d reach something else to reach instead.

It started well enough, and I thought that the story would be a game of cat and mouse between the main character and the suspected killer. However, while I kept waiting for said character to reveal her hand—for instance, to show that she had made this or that mistake on purpose, in order to better turn the tables—such moments never happened. I think this is where it went wrong for me, and I believe the first-person narration wasn’t an asset in this case: with a third person POV, I could’ve been fooled into thinking the ‘heroine’ knew what she was doing, since I wouldn’t have been completely ‘in her head; but with first person, it’s more difficult to fool the reader…

So, well, I wasn’t fooled. In spite of all her alluding to her ‘trainer’ and to how she had taught herself to face various difficult situations, she wasn’t really one step ahead. Perhaps in the very beginning, but this fell down the train as soon as Carl started coming up with new ‘conditions’ along the way, and she was totally taken aback, and… just relented, or protested weakly. That didn’t fit my idea of someone who had planned carefully, or whose plans were unravelling but who still had the savvy to bounce back.

Also, I wasn’t convinced at all by the twist at the end. Something you can’t see coming because there was never any hint of it throughout the story, is not what I call an actual twist, but cheating the reader. (Now, when I read something and I’m all ‘a-ha! So that’s why she did this in chapter2, and said that in chapter 6, and that character did that in chapter 14’, well, that’s a proper twist.)

Conclusion: 1.5 stars. Too bad.

Yzabel / September 4, 2017

Review: Yesterday

Yesterday by Felicia Yap

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

How do you solve a murder when you only remember yesterday?

Imagine a world in which classes are divided not by wealth or religion but by how much each group can remember. Monos, the majority, have only one day’s worth of memory; elite Duos have two. In this stratified society, where Monos are excluded from holding high office and demanding jobs, Claire and Mark are a rare mixed marriage. Clare is a conscientious Mono housewife, Mark a novelist-turned-politician Duo on the rise. They are a shining example of a new vision of tolerance and equality—until…

…a beautiful woman is found dead, her body dumped in England’s River Cam. The woman is Mark’s mistress, and he is the prime suspect in her murder. The detective investigating the case has secrets of his own. So did the victim. And when both the investigator’s and the suspect’s memories are constantly erased—how can anyone learn the truth?

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley.]

I’m not sure I can really call this ‘science fiction’—‘alternate history/contemporary world’, rather?— and for once I find ‘speculative fiction’ is actually more appropriate. ‘Yesterday’ is set in a 2015 world where people, due to a gene getting inhibited when they become adults, lose their short term memories. ‘Monos’ can only retain the previous days, while ‘Duos’ can retain two days… but nothing more. In order to function, people therefore have to keep writing in their diaries, and make a conscious effort to learn the important ‘facts’ that happened to them.

I found this premise quite interesting, especially when it came to setting a mystery in that world: how would an investigator go about their job, link clues together, if they can only rely on written facts and not on actual memories? Because they’re bound to forget to write some details that would then become important, only at the time they looked so trivial they didn’t think them so. This is DI Richardson’s conundrum, as the main investigator in Sophia Ayling’s suicide-or-murder case, since he knows he has to solve this very quickly, otherwise he may miss some important clues. Just like potential suspects will literally forget what a crafty interrogation session could have made them say. All of this, of course, while keeping in mind an important question: are diaries reliable?

The story revolves around four characters’ narratives and diaries: Claire Evans, a Mono ex-waitress who married a successful Duo writer, but struggles daily with her feelings of inadequacy compared to her husband’s ability to remember more; Mark Evans, whose career as a writer isn’t so satisfying anymore, just like his marriage, and who’s tempted to veer towards politics… and mistresses; Sophia Ayling, a woman with the rare ability to remember everything… including tiny little slights that built up into hatred and a deep desire for revenge; and Hans Richardson, the inspector determined to crack the case in one day, but who also harbours secrets of his own.

In itself, it was a fast-paced enough read (everything happens over 24 hours, after all), and one that kept my attention; the plot twists were easy enough for me to guess, yet at the same time I still wanted to see how the characters themselves, with their limited day to day memories, would go about making sense of everything that happened to them.

In the end, though, the memory limit proved to ask more questions than it provided answers, making the world building kind of… shaky? The society depicted here seems to have been built on the short term memory problem as if it had been here from the start. But while I can see how modern technology (paper diaries, then iDiaries—hello, parallel world Apple that I thought interesting in spite of being a little too obvious) would allow people to function, it makes one wonder how science and said technology developed in the first place: at some point, how was writing invented, if people couldn’t remember what they did two days ago, and couldn’t put it in written words? For me, it would’ve been more credible if the genetic shift had happened later in history—well, maybe it did, but the story doesn’t tell.

The ending, too, left me sceptical. I see what the author did there, but it felt too convoluted and resting on chance events (or perhaps, should I say, on a stroke of genius on one character’s part, but what led to it seemed too much like a convenient plot device?). Also, I would’ve expected the inspector character to make less blunders—either that, or other characters bearing on him for making them, because in the end there were no real consequences.

Conclusion: 2.5 stars. It is an entertaining first novel, I just wished the memory loss premise had been exploited better.