She’s woken up in a life she doesn’t recognise – with a daughter she doesn’t remember.When Charlotte McKay wakes up in a hospital bed with no memory of how she got there, all she wants is to go back to the perfect London flat she shares with her husband, and the impressive career she’s worked so hard to build. But something’s not right. Her husband David is at her bedside – but so is a … so is a three-year-old girl, and she’s calling Charlotte ‘Mummy’…
Charlotte’s first instinct is panic. When – why – did she have a child? What about her promotion, her independence, her romantic weekends with David? She loved being that woman: how can she have turned into the stay-at-home mother she swore she’d never be?
Back at home, she dives into her unfamiliar world, hoping to piece together the mystery of her transformation. But faced with so much that feels foreign and unnatural, will she ever be happy in a life she can’t remember having – or wanting to have?
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Charlotte and her husband David are living the good life. They are deeply in love, they have a perfect London flat that she has spared no cost to decorate, they can travel when they want to and she has a job that she loves and is very successful at. Their life as a couple is perfect. As the novel begins, Charlotte is in a car accident and wakes up in the hospital with David next to her. She is so happy to see him but she wants to get back to their flat and she wants to go back to work. Suddenly she realizes that there is a three year old girl calling her ‘Mum”. Who is this child and where did she come from? Charlotte soon realizes that she has lost 4 years of her life – she doesn’t remember getting pregnant or having her daughter…she only knows that she wants her old life back again. The story is told in past and present – Charlotte shows how happy she was in her job and her life in the past while lamenting her current life with a child who wants to play and hug and…be a child. Charlotte and David are estranged so she doesn’t have him to help her overcome her memory loss or to show her how to treat a child. Will Charlotte get her memory back or will she have to learn to function in her new life?
This is a story about love and marriage, children and working moms who are consumed with guilt, and finding happiness no matter where you are in your life.
The premise of the book was good but I didn’t really like the main characters. Charlotte was a spoiled person who couldn’t cope with the problems of life and David was very wishy-washy and should have explained things to her instead of pouting and avoiding her. Still, it was an interesting book and I will read other books by this author.
This was a powerful novel about motherhood! It was about our love towards our children from the moment we first see them. The struggles of being a parent and the guilt, especially about work. What makes it worse for Charlotte in the story is that after she was in an accident, she wakes up and can’t remember anything at all about her daughter. But yet she comes face to face with this child who is actually her daughter.
What could make a mother forget her child? The past four years of her life? Charlotte McKay wakes up in the hospital after an accident to find she is a mother, and, apparently, a devoted one. How could that be when the last memory she has is of a wonderful vacation with her husband with no child anywhere near her radar. She was on a career track for VP at her company and loved the freedom she and her husband had to do whatever they wished, whenever they wanted. Sure, she and her husband had discussed it at some point, with him being excited about staying home with the child, but that was still in the far future…if ever.
As Charlotte tries to reconcile the present with the past, and the lack of memory, she has to accept her now and figure out her future, which includes her very strained relationship with her husband. Can she reclaim her past, present, and future? What about her memories and her relationship with her husband and child?
Told in a dual timeline, using Charlotte’s journal entries as a window to the past as she navigates the present, we see come to understand what led her to this vastly different life and the struggle to reconcile both parts of her life to move toward a future that she can be happy with.
This was an interesting look at amnesia, as well as a look at motherhood and career for a woman, and how hard it is to have both. In this, it hit close to home for me. Though I chose to stay home, it’s about time for me to find my place in the workforce, and the gap in employment is tough, no matter how long or short it is. This is a thought-provoking read.
Thank you to NetGalley for my advanced review copy. All opinions and thoughts are my own.
#ThePuzzleofYou #LeahMercer #LakeUnionPublishing
I liked the concept of this book. Can you imagine waking up in the hospital, not remembering the past few years OR remembering that you had a child?! That would be so scary and very confusing. Unfortunately, I didn’t really like any of the characters. I didn’t find Charlotte likeable before or after her accident. She was definitely excessively obsessed with her career…This book did highlight the fallout of how a lack of communication, guilt, and assumptions can impact a marriage.
Thank you to Lake Union Publishing and NetGalley for providing a copy for review.
6/19/21- An interesting story about a woman waking up with no recollection of the last 4 years of her life. As she tries to piece together the person she is now with the person she used to be and figure out what went wrong. The character is very extreme, but it’s interesting to see her try to cope and evolve.
Ok, where do I start. First of all I found this book kind of boring. It had not thrills or mystery that came out. To me it was just plain and monotonous. I like a book to grab me and not let go. This didn’t do that anywhere.
While I may not have enjoyed this book I will not say that it’s not for others. To me the characters were boring, not excitement for me to hold onto and keep turning pages. I put it down so many times then went back until I finally finished it. Mother’s make these decisions about whether to work or be home with their child all the time. That is their choice of course. But what exactly put her in the hospital or what happened to make her forget she even had a daughter? I still wonder exactly what happened. Did I miss something here??
I give this 2 stars but won’t say don’t read it. That is totally up to you.
Thank you to NetGalley and Lake Union for this book.
Jack Campbell Loves Big Brother. This is a solidly written and told story that is quite a bit infuriating, but I try to be “professional” enough in my reviews to not drop stars because I disagree with the story of a fiction book. And most of the infuriating aspects of the tale are spoilers to discuss anyway and may not (likely won’t) be as infuriating to most people to boot. But Mercer does an excellent job of telling her tale, and therefore there is nothing to actually ding here other than the fact that it simply pissed me off. (And if you catch the dual references in the title, that gives you a clue into why I am so pissed off with it – but as I said, actually referencing what makes me so mad is to go into spoiler territory.) So yes, the book is very much recommended in and of itself, even though I personally wanted to throw my damn kindle down in disgust.