This month's book club pick is The Memory Box by Eva Lesko Natiello about a woman named Caroline living a seemingly idyllic life in the Connecticut suburbs. Caroline has an adoring husband, two beautiful daughters, a lovely home, and good standing among the other fancy moms in the neighborhood. One day, after Googling herself on a whim, that whole life falls apart. How can there be parts of her life, great big important chunks, that she doesn't remember? What has she forgotten and how? Caroline begins to unravel as she searches for answers to questions that make no sense to her.
Unfortunately for this novel, those questions don't make a lot of sense to the reader, either. The author tries so hard to make it a mystery, to keep it exciting, that it gets annoying. Self-named "an unputtdownable psychological thriller" (what a load of marketing baloney- you can't call your own book that in the Amazon listing!), there is a real effort to keep the reader confused so that she will keep reading to figure out what is going on. I don't mind that for a little bit. I accept that it will take me a chapter or two to get to know the characters in a new book and get a handle on the plot. That's fine. What's not fine is when it goes on and on until I'm just irritated with the book and all the characters involved. That was the case here.
I liked this book enough to finish it, but not enough to really recommend it. It was just okay.
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