In the small, affluent town of Fairview, Connecticut everything seems picture perfect.
Until one night when young Jenny Kramer is attacked at a local party. In the hours immediately after, she is given a controversial drug to medically erase her memory of the violent assault. But, in the weeks and months that follow, as she heals from her physical wounds, and with no factual recall of the attack, Jenny struggles with her raging emotional memory. Her father, Tom, becomes obsessed with his inability to find her attacker and seek justice while her mother, Charlotte, prefers to pretend this horrific event did not touch her perfect country club world.
As they seek help for their daughter, the fault lines within their marriage and their close-knit community emerge from the shadows where they have been hidden for years, and the relentless quest to find the monster who invaded their town - or perhaps lives among them - drive this psychological thriller to a shocking and unexpected conclusion.
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[He followed her through the woods behind the house]***
(HarperCollins, 12 July 2016, 319 pages, ebook borrowed from @GlasgowLib via @OverDriveLibs)
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This book opens with a shocking bang that left me reeling. Rape is something that can be hard to read about, fiction or non-fiction. At times I had to put this book aside because it really upset me. Not in a bad way. I was so connected to the characters, especially Jenny I couldn't bear to go through her ordeal for one more page. I think Jenny's parents made a mistake giving her the pill to erase the memory of what happened to her. I can understand their motivation for doing this, absolutely. This decision has traumatic and far-reaching consequences which are explored in the rest of the book. The rapist remembers her. How can she identify him if her memory has been damaged? If she recalls the memories how can be sure they are not false ones? The book is narrated for the most part by a psychiatrist assigned to Jenny when her family are forced to realise erasing the memory of her assault did not delete the event itself. His behavior is unethical at times and I didn't like him one little bit. The book has a lot of twists and turns and when the truth is finally revealed I was stunned. I did not expect the outcome. This is a great book.
