The Book:
All Is Not Forgotten by Wendy Walker, 2016
The Characters:
Jenny, rape victim
Alan, her therapist
Her parents, Charlotte and Tom
Get it on Amazon.
The Plot (from Goodreads):
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.
The Ending:
Glen Shelby (another patient of Alan) had raped Jenny. He had been stalking Alan’s son, which was why he was at the party. He planned to rape Alan’s son, but Jenny got in the way so he raped her instead. He killed himself and the police found his detailed account of the rape in a notebook.
Alan was raped by his foster brother when he was 12. He had told the story of his rape to Glen while treating him, and said it felt like an hour. Glen was trying to recreate the exact story with Jenny, but misremembered and though Alan had said it had been an hour.
When Alan had seen in the news that Jenny’s back had been carved, he knew Glen had done it. It was confirmed when he was looking through his son Jason’s phone to remove evidence of Jason in the sweatshirt. This is why he sought out Jenny to become her doctor.
The Review:
I can’t believe this is Wendy Walker’s first thriller! I’ve had Don’t Look For Me on my TBR shelf for months and for some reason haven’t gotten around to it, but was in need of an audiobook and came across this one in my app. Now I’ll have to get to Don’t Look For Me even sooner.
This book is extremely emotional and may be disturbing for some. If you are triggered by books about rape, this is definitely not the book for you. Reading about the memory-erasing drug gave me a feeling similar to claustrophobia as I tried to imagine how it would feel to know something significant had happened in your life, but not be able to remember what it was or why you feel the way you do.
Trigger warnings aside, this book had a great plot and very well-written characters. Although Alan was wildly flawed, I found him to be a fascinating character.
The ending was definitely not one I saw coming, but it tied all of the characters and loose ends up well. I really enjoyed how WW wove all the plotlines together in the end.
