Thank you to Netgalley & Head of Zeus for this thrilling ARC! This reminded me so much of a really good psychological Blockbuster movie. It was extremely well written, and every time I thought I had gotten a hold on what was going on, I was thrown for another loop. Very interesting premise that had me riveted from start to finish. I can't say much more without giving SOME of it away (that's how many twists there are!) but imagine someone showing up at your door and neither you nor the stranger know who they are. I never expected the book to turn and end the way it did, but it was well worth it. I highly recommend this one!

A woman turns up at Tony and Laura's home convinced it's her home. She's forgotten her name and has lost her bag at the airport with her keys, purse and passport inside but she knows the layout of the house. Tony thinks she's got amnesia and invites her to stay the night even cooking her dinner. Laura's not so sure but goes along with it arranging for her to see their local GP in the morning.

Tony decides to name her until she remembers her real name which brings with it it's own problems.. It's a really twisty read which had me on the edge of my seat throughout. I absolutely loved it and it's stuffed full of explosive threads in the story I just didn't see coming.

When a young woman turns up on a doorstep in a small English village, claiming to have lost her memory but seeming to recognise the house, a chain of sinister events begins.

Excellent thriller, that keeps you guessing right to the end.

I loved the opening premise - an amnesiac returning to her house (the only thing she remembers) to find another couple living there - and the rest of the book proved just as gripping. The clever twist halfway through sets the second half of the book off on a different tangent and keeps you guessing /turning the pages right to the end.

This is a clever, psychological thriller. The book opens with a woman returning to a rural village and thinking she ‘s going home to her own house. On arriving there she finds a couple living there and they say that they are the owners. She then realises that she cannot remember her name or where she has been, only that she has just flown in from Berlin. Laura and Tony, the couple already living in the house, take pity on her and let her stay the night and make an appointment for the woman to see their GP friend. On seeing the woman, the GP thinks she recognises her as someone who has lived in the house years ago and murdered another woman. The plot the thickens, who’s lying and who is telling the truth? This book is quite complicated in parts, so many secrets to unravel and I thought I had worked out the ending but was totally wrong. A recommended mystery thriller.
Thanks to NetGalley and Head of Zeus for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book.

This is a good psychological thriller, that takes an unexpected turn half way through. It is well paced, and keeps you hooked. I will look out for further books by this author.

I have spent too long trying to write a review this book deserves but my head just can't get it right.

It is marvellous. Definitely one of the best books I have read this year.

Evil hiding in plain sight

Tony is an American living with his English wife in a village in the English countryside. One day a woman arrives on their doorstep with a suitcase and announces “I live here. I’ve been away on a business trip. This is my house.” She cannot remember her name, claims to have lost her handbag at Heathrow and knows the layout of their house! They invite her in, and their lives are forever changed. They take her to a doctor who diagnoses psychogenic amnesia, a condition that is triggered by major trauma or stress and causes temporary amnesia. The person can recall the past, before the event that caused the amnesia, but nothing afterwards.

Laura is a yoga teacher, and Tony runs a vegan café and art gallery and is obsessed with seahorses. The seahorse belongs to the genus Hippocampus, and humans have a region of the brain called the hippocampus that encodes short-term memories into long-term ones and looks very much like a seahorse! Tony’s father died of Alzheimer’s disease at the age of forty-one and Tony understandably fears what may be happening in his brain seeing as he is already forty. They have only been in their house for a month and have been married for just a few months. The woman’s arrival affects the lives of many people in the town, not only Laura and Tony. Luke Lascelles, a journalist, also needs to find out who the woman is hoping to discover a bit more about himself along the way. His friend, Sean, thinks she is a Russian infiltrator and says he can prove it. Who is the mystery woman and why is she there?

Some people are very clever at disguising who they really are, and a helping hand is not always as helpful as it may seem. When I first started reading the book I was a bit annoyed that the characters invited a stranger into their house without any hesitation, I thought to myself – “in this day and age, how likely is that?”, But as I read further, I became drawn into this cleverly plotted thriller, and I was blown away by the finale. I have read many books that are cleverly written but have a very weak, half-hearted ending. This book, however, is a masterpiece, I never saw the plot going in this direction at all. Brilliant read and I would highly recommend the book.

Saphira

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.

Thankyou to NetGalley, Head Of Zeus and the author, J S Monroe, for the opportunity to read an advanced readers copy of Forget My Name in exchange for an honest and unbiased opinion.
I enjoyed reading this book. I thought the storyline was well thought out and fast paced with plenty of twists and turns that kept me guessing until the very end. A great mystery full of intrigue.
Well worth a read.

My thanks to NetGalley and Head of Zeus for giving me the opportunity to review FORGET MY NAME by J.S. Monroe.
The plot for FORGET MY NAME is keenly mapped, and the author jumps into the action almost from the very first sentence. A young woman arrives in the UK from Berlin and makes her way to a house she thinks she recognises, in fact thinks it's her home. When the occupants give her admittance she tells them she thinks she is suffering from amnesia. Because of the strange circumstances with which she arrives in Swindon in Wiltshire there is of course an investigation, which leads the reader up some strange, but enjoyable complex avenues. As a psychological thriller it ticks all the right boxes and I would certainly read more of J.S Monroe's work..

Forget My Name is a pacy thriller that kept me guessing throughout. It starts with a main character having memory loss and turning up at a house claiming she lives there. The owners take her in and the plot develops from there. There’s plenty of additional interesting characters along the way and I really got absorbed in the events as they unfolded.

At times I felt some of the scenarios were a bit far fetched but, nevertheless i never considered giving up.

I’d have liked to have had a resolution for the journalist searching for his daughter and also would have liked to find it more about the detective’s son.

I was given the opportunity to read this book by netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
This really was a mystery, full of twists and turns. Who is the strange woman that turns up on the doorstep of a house in a sleepy Wiltshire village, claiming that she had lived there but having no recollection of her name? Was she a seriously disturbed schizophrenic or somebody completely different? To expand further would spoil a gripping read so I’ll reveal no more of the plot. The characters in this book are sometimes a bit one dimensional but the plot and its resolution are enough to keep you reading into the small hours!

A bit gruesome.
Firstly what I didn't like: Long titles that tell me what is going to happen - *a shocking twist* - well, that breaks the suspense. Also, I found it quite hard to find any character that I cared about - Luke perhaps, or Sean, but none of the females, except perhaps the policewoman. The seahorses link was easy to spot, so perhaps that spoilt the 'gripping' thriller.
What did I like? It was reasonably well written, plenty of twists (not just the one) and the ending wasn't obvious from the start - although it was from part of the way through.
There are a lot of psychological thrillers around at the moment - this one just did not stand out of the crowd for me, but it was a fine read and if that is what you like, then you will probably enjoy this.

A story of amnesia, of family and hidden lives.

I enjoyed this book from the start, the writing is pacy, aided by short chapters which change between characters. This is a style of writing I really enjoy.

This book really had me guessing what was going to happen next, who is this girl, where did she come from, does she really not remember anything about her life??

The peripheral characters were also interesting and added to the overall plot. In fact it never occurred to me how vital these roles would be until about half way through the book when certain details are revealed.

The story that plays out in the second half of the book was cleverly constructed and imaginative. I have never come across a similar storyline so I would definitely recommend to fans of psychological thrillers.

The premise of this book got me really excited, an unknown woman turns up at a random house, she doesn’t know why this house, she doesn’t know who she is, and most chilling of all she doesn’t even know her own name. The owners of the house Tony and Laura feel sorry for her, comfort her, let her stay and try to find out what she is all about. Tony decides that she needs to have a name and calls her Jemma.

The next day they take “Jemma” to a doctor where she is diagnosed with a form of amnesia, not only that someone from the villiage feels like they recognise her and so does the doctor. This is where is all goes downhill for “Jemma” and people come to their own conclusion of who this woman really is…

As the story unfolds I was still gripped, wanting to know if this “Jemma” is who everyone says she is, of course she can’t remember who she is so how can she defend herself. Each chapter is a different persons view point you read “Jemma’s” point of view, Tony & Laura, Luke a local reporter who feels he recognises “Jemma” and the police. I was desperate to find out who this woman was and why she came to this particular village and particular house, where did she come from and does she have another agenda?

As the story went on there seemed to be a lot of plot twists and unexpected turns, lots of secrets and lies with most of the characters. I did feel like a lot of side plots where unnecessary when the overall story ended up to be quite complex for a thriller, At times I felt myself glazing over and skipping bits I didn’t feel necessary to the story. Half way through there is a big reveal and at this point I did loose quite a bit of interest. I thought that could of been the end of the story but I was still only half way through, so I had no idea where the story would go from here, it took a while for it to pick up again, although the ending has the most action I felt slightly disappointed with it.

I really wanted to love this book and I felt like if there was a different outcome at the end I may of enjoyed it more. I felt it got overly complex so lost the “thrill” that it started with. Unfortunatly this story wasn’t for me, not my favourite thriller I have read this year.

Not a bad read, a little over long for me, felt it could have been wrapped up earlier , but a decent story with a decent conclusion

I loved the beginning of this book the idea was really interesting and kept me hooked, however I felt as it progressed the story became more and more far fetched. The was not enough depth to the characters for me. . Bit all in all a reasonable read. .

Not my usual psychological thriller genre as it's too far-fetched to retain my interest greatly. Nonetheless, it was a strange and a clever plot which retained my interest. Thank you to NetGalley and Zeus.

This was a strange book, told in two very different storylines. The first part was alright, but the characterisation wasn’t that great, I felt that the main subjects were somewhat two-dimensional, I didn’t really get a sense of any of them. The story seemed very far-fetched, and the police response a bit over the top for the situation of a woman who’s lost her memory. The relationships between Laura and Tony was not at all convincing, even before the arrival of the mystery woman. The other relationships came across as cliched.
The second part of the storyline was also very far fetched and unbelievable, and all too predictable in my opinion. . The ending was very weak, despite the tense build up.
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my copy of this book in return for an honest review,

This Novel drew me in from the start, which is no mean feat given the number of books I have read recently. I found the characters very real , inasmuch as they could have been drawn from the archives of a real crime scenario. The writer portrayed the medical elements in a detailed and concise manner, which added to the more horiffic descriptions. I found myself second guessed on more than one occasion, and even when I knew what was about to happen, it was with bated breath. This would make a great Movie!
I would thoroughly recommend this Novel and would like to thank Netgalley and the Publishers for the opportunity of reading this ARC.