Original & Deftly Plotted - Will Keep You Guessing:
J S Monroe bases his second novel, "Forget My Name", on amnesia and mistaken identity. The plot is expertly crafted using a mixture of both to provide a novel which will keep you guessing right till the end. (Well it kept me guessing to the end and I pride myself on being able to work out what will happen.)
The reader has got suspend some reality to enjoy this novel : after all, it would be nigh impossible to fly in from Berlin to Heathrow's terminal 5 in 2018 and not be readily identified. Monroe covers for this unlikely event very capably.
The storyline is a simple one: a young lady turns up at a village house suffering from amnesia. The only thing she can recall is that she lived in or knows the house, now owned by Tony and Laura. Her handbag containing her personal documents went missing at Heathrow Airport, her suitcase has no identifying documents in it. As soon as possible she is examined by a GP, Dr Susie Patterson, who diagnoses short term amnesia. More damning is that the GP also believes she knows "Jemma's" identity. "Jemma" is the temporary name given her by Tony. And a bad choice as it transpires. The GP notes a remarkable similarity to a former patient of the surgery, coincidentally another "Jemma". Unfortunately that isn't good news. If Jemma is, who the Doctor believes her to be, then it would mean that she was mentally disturbed and a danger to herself and the villagers. But why would she return to this village after so many years away? Is she truly the Jemma that the GP thinks she is? Read the novel and you'll find out.
Containing unexpected twists and turns this is a thriller which will keep you guessing.

The first thing that struck me while reading this book was how clever the storyline was, it litrally had me guessing and changing my mind about what was happening all the way through. The story starts with a woman who knocks on a married couples door that has no memory of who she is or why she is there. The husband takes a great interest in trying to help the woman but seems to have an unhealthy fascination. Lots of twists and turns along the way that had me litrally up all night needing to finish the book and see how it concludes, I was certainly not disappointed! Really good plot and I will definitely be recommending. I give this book a five star rating!

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This is the first book I’ve read by J S Monroe and hopefully not my last.
It is an unusual story about a young woman who has lost her memory and can’t even remember her name. She is on an unstoppable mission for revenge for the disappearance/murder of her lover. The story is quite involved and jumps about a bit making it difficult to follow at times, but if you keep going you will soon catch up.
Thank you to Netgalley and Head of Zeus for the opportunity to read and review this novel.

I’m not lacking in imagination and I can suspend my incredulity if the story is good enough but this book just didn’t hav3 me convinced. Too many very unlikely and really unbelievable things in one story.

Wowza. Unique, intriguing, tension building and breathtaking. I couldn't wait to pick this book back up again eveey time I put it back down!

I loved the book. Fast paced with a superbly written story line. Appealing characters and a plot that grips you from the very start. I could not put this book down!

A compelling and fast moving psychological thriller with many twists and turns in the narrative. I enjoyed this novel.very much and look forward to.reading more by this author.

Unputdownable.

What would you do if a young woman knocks on your front door saying that she has lost her memory? A young woman arrives at Heathrow airport.
She’s lost her bag, her phone, passport everything, including her memory. All she knows is that she has a train ticket to a village in Wiltshire and every now and again she will get a flashback of her best friend, Fleur. When she arrives in the village, she feels drawn to a cottage. A cottage that is now owned by Tony and Laura. A cottage that the stranger is able to describe right down to the tiniest details. She must have lived here at some point in her past.
Tony decides that she looks like a Jemma, (with a J) and with no reason not to, this is the name that she stranger begins to answer to. . . . but there was another Jemma (with a J) in the village before and after murdering her best friend at university, she has since disappeared. Some of the locals are convinced that these women are one and the same person . . .

This book takes place over just 4 days and they are a bloody busy 4 days starting off at Heathrow Airport, taking us to a village in Wiltshire and then ending up in Berlin. A fantastic fast-paced book that is full of twists and turns that at times left me wondering what the hell was going on. Who am I supposed to believe? There were a few different plotlines, but they worked well and all came together in the end even though there were the odd little bits that were utterly unbelievable - which I can’t go into without giving the game away – but this didn’t distract from my enjoyment of the book. I found myself rooting for Jemma all the way through. Sympathising with how terrifying it must be to suddenly have no memory of anything other than a house.

This is the first book that I have read by this author and I will certainly be keeping an eye out for more.

Many thanks to Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest opinion.

After last year’s sensational and spine-tingling Find Me, best-selling author J.S. Monroe is back with a new addictive, shocking and hair raising new thriller that is absolutely impossible to put down: Forget My Name. Superbly written, heart-poundingly suspenseful and packed with jaw-dropping twists and turns, Find Me is another superlative read by J.S. Monroe.

A young girl gets off a plane at Heathrow airport and loses her bag, her phone, her wallet – and her memory. With no recollection about her name, where she was or where she was meant to be going, this young girl has arrived back in London without a clue about her identity or her past – save for a house which she lives in in a a rural village outside London and distant memories of Fleur, her best friend with whom she had got a matching tattoo of a lotus flower. Feeling this magnetic pull towards this house, the girl knocks on the front door and is greeted by a couple, Tony and Laura, who are naturally perplexed by this stranger arriving at their door and claiming that she lives in their home.

Tony and Laura find themselves with no choice but to let her into their house and try and help out this lost and confused girl. Although she cannot remember anything about her life or her past, this girl knows the entire layout of their house and can remember obscure details about Tibet and Russian history. Staying in their spare room, Tony decides to christen their unexpected house guest Jemma because he thinks that she looks like a Jemma. But why did Tony choose this name? Did he merely pluck the name out of thin air? Or is there something far more sinister and disturbing afoot?

Jemma insists that she never met them before, but is she as honest as she seems? Has she truly lost her memory? Or is this just a wicked and cruel game of deception and revenge?

What secrets are Tony, Laura and Jemma hiding? Which one of them is lying? And which one of them will end up paying the ultimate price?

A phenomenally good thriller that chilled me to the bone, Forget My Name is a book that got under my skin and which I simply couldn’t bear to stop reading. J.S. Monroe captures readers’ attention from the very first page and has written an outstanding chiller that shocks, thrills, tantalizes, disturbs and keeps readers on the edge of their seats desperate to find out what happens next.

Forget My Name is a book that grabs readers by the throat and will keep them up until the early hours of the morning with its beguiling blend of menacing suspense, unflagging action and relentless pace. A book that continues to cement J.S. Monroe’s standing as one of the genre’s finest and most talented practitioners, Forget My Name is a book that is as hard to put down and it is to forget!

Absolutely unputdownable read, keeps you enthralled and guessing up to the unexpected end. Thank you Netgalley/ Publisher Head Of Zeus for letting me read an advance copy in return for my honest review

I really enjoyed this book. The storyline kept you guessing. A stranger appears in the village claiming to have lost her memory but claims to have lived there before especially in one particular house. Many twists and turns and kept you guessing until the end.

A great read. I will certainly be looking for more by this author.

This is a book with which I struggled to engage. The idea of someone turning up on a doorstep and finding strangers in their house & not knowing who they are is a good one. I anticipated a strong psychological thriller with plenty of suspense. Unfortunately I didn't feel that this lived up to my expectations.
I didn't find the narrative style easy to follow. It went from third to first person and back again leaving me feeling as if the story was very disjointed.
I just couldn't "get in" to this book and felt it just didn't flow well enough.

I found the characters difficult to engage with and the plot a bit far fetched. Although it seemed to be following the same lines as Gone Girl or Girl on the Train it was not quite the thriller I was expecting .

Forget My Name is the fabulous new thriller from J.S. Monroe.

How you would feel if you suddenly forgot your name? And then, when searching for your name, you realised you had forgotten everything – your friends, family, address? What would you do?

This is what has happened to the protagonist when we meet her.

She is travelling by train, led by a train ticket in her pocket, to a quiet village in Wiltshire. She instinctively heads to a house in the village. She knows this house. It must be her home. So who are the couple living there?

As locals try to help the protagonist regain her memory, some dark theories are raised. Is she the murderous Jemma who left the village many years previously? Is she related to the childhood sweetheart of a local journalist? Is she an undercover Russian agent? Who is she?

So many questions, yet so few answers….

The story takes place over a period of four days and there is certainly a lot packed into that short time frame. The book has great pace and flow to it. The plot is well-crafted and scarily believable. As the pieces of the puzzle start to slowly slot together, the story moves from Wiltshire to Berlin, where the true horror of the situation becomes apparent. The book takes the reader through a veritable rabbit warren of possibilities, twists and revelations that will make it almost impossible to put it down - this is definitely the perfect book for a bit of binge-reading!

I enjoyed the characterisations within the story. The hospitable couple, Tony and Laura, are fascinating, as are journalist Luke and his conspiracy-theorist Irish friend. I particularly liked DI Silas Hart, there was something about his character that appealed to me. It was fascinating to read the author's description of the characters' reactions to the protagonist when she first appears in the village, as compared to their reactions when they begin to suspect that she is 'Jemma'. I will admit to having a lot of sympathy for the protagonist as I cannot imagine how lost and isolated one would feel to lose their memory, never mind being told that you may be a mentally deranged killer! Once the truth is revealed, we realise just how much the protagonist has been through and cannot help but feel continuing sympathy for the woman. I enjoyed seeing how her story tied in with those of the other characters, Tony and journalist Luke.

Forget My Name is a dark and unpredictable tale, full of twists and turns. A sinister, gripping and very entertaining read.

The latest book from J.S Monroe focusses on an amnesiac who turns up at the house she remembers living in. Naturally, happily married couple Tony and Laura take ‘Jemma’ into their home
and in fairly predictable fashion things go downhill quickly in this thriller. Flitting between first and third person narratives in order to deliberately mislead the reader has become de rigueur to the point of exhaustion in recent years. Initially, the premise was clever but now seems as if it’s suffering from genre fatigue with, Believe Me, Gone Girl and many others using the device to wrong-foot the reader. Don’t get me wrong it doesn’t mean it’s bad, just that it takes more ingenuity from the writer to throw die-hard genre fans off the scent. There are some genuine ‘gasp’ moments as the truth is slowly revealed, but there are other points where it reverts to type. The final denouement also requires plenty of stretches of the imagination. It’s fairly predictable who the killer actually is and there are some plot holes that require you to have as much amnesia as the main character. That said, you still find yourself engaging with the characters and Monroe writes in an absorbing way that compels you to turn the page, even if at times you can second guess what comes next.

I’m sorry but this book is utterly unbelievable. Why would a senior policeman get so involved in hunting a person who hasn’t committed any crime or a person who had served their sentence and been discharged? Would the police service sanction cordoning off a whole village on the basis of finding a missing person? What doctor would run out of their surgery to look for a person who isn’t even a patient? This story stretches the imagination to the point of ridiculousness.

Wow absolutely loved this book. When a stranger turns up on your own doorstep claiming they have lost their memory but lived in your house what would you do. They take her in and try to help piece her life together but what happens next will leave you astonished. I thought that I knew where this book was going but the last 2 chapters completely threw me. There are so many twists and turns in this book that you won't want to put it down.. I highly recommend buying it.

An unusual story. The main character has lost her memory and ends up at a house where she thinks she lives. Every day she has to start remembering again so writes the previous day down. There are a few curve balls in this. Some unpleasant characters and I really rooted for the main character and her fears. 5/5 on good reads.

This kept me guessing and was almost like two separate stories as everything you thought you knew was turned on it’s head halfway through. I didn’t know where the story was going to go from there and I was a little confused at times but it all came together in the end. Overall a promising book and will read more from this author. Thanks to Netgalley, the author and Head of Zeus for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.