THE LAST THING SHE REMEMBERS is full of twist and turns and deception. I am glad I was picked to read this one because it is amazing. It has bit of everything, suspense, heart and great characters.

The Last Thing She Remembers begins with an amnesiac showing up at a couple's door in a small British village. She doesn't know her name but believes this to be where she lived. She's just gotten off a plane from Germany but lost her purse and only had a train ticket to this small town. The couple decide to be good Samaritans and invite her to spend the night, while helping her to retrieve her memories.

I read the entire book because I love a good amnesia story, but from the first, this one was just too over the top. I generally read fiction (usually mystery/thrillers), but it has to be rooted in some amount of reality. I just couldn't suspend belief to the degree that this novel requires. The writing was strong but the whole novel was convoluted.

Thank you to NetGalley and Park Row Books for providing me a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review. I wish I could be more positive about this one.

The Last Thing She Remembers has an extremely innovative premise. The plot was quite complex, and the pacing oft he book is slow, which lends to the suspense. I appreciated that J.S. Monroe was able to layer the amnesiac character in such a way that she seems interesting and dimensional even without her core memories. As a psychological suspense The Last Thing She Remembers works well. I would read more from J.S. Monroe.
I received my copy through NetGalley under no obligation.

This is a nice psychological thriller, reminded me of Gone Girl. A woman shows up at a doorstep without remembering anything - not even her name. And the story unfolds little by little, with surprising twists and turns.

I can’t remember my own name

A stranger arrives in a village in England, but can’t remember her name. She’s lost all her personal belongings in an airport and thinks she’s heading home, but that’s not the case when she gets to the house and someone else answers the door. Tony and Laura are nice enough to take the stranger thing, but who is she? Someone who used to live in their house, a convicted murdered, the daughter of one of their neighbors, or a Russian spy?

“The Last Thing She Remembers” by J.S. Monroe started off great! I was intrigued and really wanted to figure out who this woman was. There was so much potential, but I just found myself confused most of the time. There were a lot of characters, a lot of characters, and a lot of back and forth between locations like England, Berlin, India, and the US. The author also had a few different characters that looked alike to help with the plot, but that just confused me more.

I really wanted to love this book so I kept reading. I figured some of the ending out, but not all of it which was good. I do think this could have been edited to be a bit shorter eliminating some of the external characters which would have made it less confusing.

Thank you NetGalley and Harlequin for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

Thank you netgalley for the advance copy of this title in exchange for my honest review/opinion.

This was a differently fun book. The book started out interesting, and exactly how i thought it would go. It turned odd and had many layers. Overall, it was interesting, and I enjoyed finishing the book.

The book at me hooked from the beginning. The main character just shows up at a house and has no idea who she is. She recognizes the house she showed up at and can describe the layout and everything. However, she looks like a person that has a dark past. Is she that person? Do people really have her best interest at heart? Are people even telling the truth?

This book is 416 pages. The average thriller is 360 ish pages. That means this book is 50 ish pages longer than the average thriller. However, it reads like a 600 page book. My biggest hang up was how the original question or plot point of the book was resolved by the middle. The rest of the book is following the same main character and that first part, which was half the book, really wasn't the main point of the book even though that was what the synopsis advertised it as.


I go more than I bargained for but I an left with the question of why? Why did the author decided to write the book in this way? I get that it adds layers to the story and allows for more intricate details of the character's past, which are addressed later. I also hated that a main character then explains how they did what they did. Like a cut scene to the past. There is a reason movies no longer use this. You are adding some crazy aspect that no one would have guessed so that you can make the character have these "super power" abilities that would defy logic in a normal setting. Yes, I am being vague for the sack of the book.

And if I have to read the words seahorse again I think I will want to take the little seahorse shaped portion of my brain out so I no longer have to remember that I have read that word that many times. I was curious so I looked it up on my kindle. It was written 60 times.

All in all it, was way too long. I thought it was wrapping up BUT WAIT THERE"S MORE another 200 pages to go. This book should have been more concise to preserve the main point and my attention. Another round of editing to tighten up that first 200 pages into 100 pages could have made this a higher rated book for me.

However, I am still looking forward to reading more from this author but this book is just not for me.

The Last Thing She Remembers is being at the airport. She can’t remember how she got there or even her name. She has her suitcase but there is no indication in it of her name or destination. Luckily, she finds a train ticket home in her pocket.

When she arrives at the train’s destination, she recognizes her home. However, when she knocks on the door, a stranger answers. The house’s residents, married couple Tony and Laura, insist they have owned the house for a month. But the traveler knows the layout of the house so the couple call their doctor thinking she has amnesia. The doctor tells her to rest. As the hospital is full, she stays with Tony and Laura. To ensure the best experience, it is best if the rest of the plot is unknown.

The Last Thing She Remembers is extremely plot driven. Character development is sacrificed a bit for the many twists and turns. Determining the final plot resolution is unlikely so this book would not be good for armchair detectives. However, the rollicking ride through one person’s life is great fun. As soon as I finished the shocking conclusion, I returned to the beginning to see if it was fair to the ending. And it was! I just didn’t see it during my initial reading. One off-topic comment, this book could only take place in England as no one will open a door to a stranger in California or most areas of the US. They certainly wouldn’t invite a stranger to spend a few days in their house. Overall, it’s a good thriller read especially for readers that enjoy a twisty plot and aren’t overly concerned with character motivation. 3.5 stars rounded up to 4 stars!

Thanks to Park Row and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

(3.5 Stars)
This started out exactly as I was hoping; a woman shows up out of nowhere without a memory of who she is, to a house she knows the layout of, which is occupied by another couple who claim to own the place and have no knowledge of her being a previous owner. So many questions, so much confusion.

I feel like this situation has to be handled delicately. I've noticed sometimes the lack of memory is a convenient disability to drive a story, where the character conveniently doesn't ask the right questions or have what I would figure is a human response to the situation, only because the author wants to drag out the mystery of it all.

That doesn’t seem to happen here, at least not initially and the first quarter of the book is really intriguing, and I had no idea what direction this book was going to go in. But as other characters got introduced, things seemed to go off on weird tangents. I think it was meant to throw the reader off, but there were a lot of very different tangents that seemed more outlandish than clever and tis is where things start to kind of fall apart.

I also started to get a really uncomfortable feeling about the way certain characters were acting and reacting. It seemed to come totally out of the blue for me, a hard veer off the initial story path. I mostly found it confusing, but I was intrigued enough to keep going, to find out the actual motivations behind the way people were acting.

There's no doubt that this is full of twists and turns, some of them are actually pretty great. But theres a number of them that also just feel like they are there to throw the reader off track, which is great if they make sense, but sometimes you had to give the story a wide birth in order to continue. The steps it took for everything to come together in the end seemed a little farfetched. It was almost like the story didn't know where it was going until it got there, so some of it seemed a little disconnected from where the story started.

All of that said, I may have had mixed feelings about this, but I devoured it pretty quickly needing to know exactly where this wild ride ended. It was quite long, maybe a bit too long and seemed like it should have ended a couple of times, but the intrigue was strong enough for me to push through and I honestly had no idea what was happening until the very end. And the way it ended, when things started to take form, I actually really, really liked the direction this went on. I might have taken the scenic route to get there, but the payoff was worth it.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Park Row, and J.S. Monroe for the opportunity to read this thrill ride of a story!

Tony and Laura open their door one night to find a woman on their doorstop. She tells them that she got off the train and can't remember anything from that point. Her bag had been stolen that had her phone and all her IDs - she doesn't know her own name. But their house is familiar and she can describe the floor plan exactly. Tony and Laura let her come in and spend the night after making an appointment to see a doctor the next day. The stranger is diagnosed with amnesia. But people in town are having reactions to her - Luke thinks he knows her and others think she may be someone with a very dangerous past,

Without giving any more away, get ready for quite the thriller - hard to put down!

I love an unreliable narrator, especially with coupled with amnesia plotlines, so I was really stoked to get this book. I appreciate what the author was trying to do in this book and was really engaged for the first third of the book or so. Somewhere in the middle, it started dragging. Without giving any spoilers, the plot was even more complicated than initially portrayed so I commend the level of thought and effort the author put in to configure the plot. I would be interested in reading more from this author.

Thanks to NetGalley, Harlequin Trade Publishing, and the author J.S Monroe for a digital review copy. This book was first published May 28, 2019.

I wish I could give this book more than five stars! The author reels you into the story right from the beginning. A woman having lost her purse, id and everything that could be used to identify her arrives at what she believes to be her home. Unfortunately she has no idea of who she is, only that the house she is trying to enter is her home. This is the beginning of a mysterious story in which the characters are well developed and will keep you guessing until the end. The author drops many bread crumbs along the way, but if you think you know the story you are wrong. Every time I tried to put it down, something happened and I had to read it straight through. Although new to me, I look forward to reading more from this author.


Also reviewed at B&N and Kobo under the name IrishEyes430

The Last Thing She Remembers by J.S. Monroe was full of suspense and mystery from the start to end. The story begins with a woman who lost her purse with all identification and does not remember her name. She ends up at a home where she believes she lived, but a couple is living there. They take her in and want to help her, but who is she and what is her past? Suddenly there are rumors and conspiracies that surround her. This story was captivating and full of twists and is told in several point of views.

Happy reading!

Stress induced amnesia is a scary thing. As her purse is stolen and she has no identification or knowledge of who she is can cause panic. She only knows where her train ticket was to take her. She feels like everyone is on high alert with her around and that maybe they are hiding something about her past from her.

The Last Thing She Remembers is a great twisty mystery suspense novel fabricated on the mystery of a woman who knocks on the door or a young couples house claiming amnesia. Said mystery woman has a train ticket to the small English village and says that she was compelled to show up at their door because she "knows the house", but can't remember how or why. I for one love mystery stories built on the amnesia trope and J.S. Monroe really excels at the creation of a fascinating multi-layered story that left me on edge.

I found myself wide awake at 2 am and decided to pick up from where I left it at 20% in thinking I just might fall back to sleep. Well, sleep was not in my immediate future. In fact, 3 1/2 hours later when I finished it was nearly time to get up for work and my mind was still buzzing with how this ended. Brilliantly I might add. The story is told from multiple viewpoints that all work together so perfectly to create a suspense that kept me completely engaged. The characters are smart, devious and scary and I wondered which of the characters would throw me for a loop, but really the question was which ones wouldn't. Some are exactly what they seem, but those that aren't, they make up for the difference. The plot is executed on point, leaving no holes and many moments of pure astonishment.

I so thoroughly enjoyed this read that I don't mind the missed sleep and found myself compelled to pick up the authors previous book for the next time I can afford to lose sleep.

Have you heard the saying, “Less is more”? When it comes to the book The Last Thing She Remembers by J.S. Monroe, I think this should have been taken this into consideration. That being said, this book does have a few positives that allowed to me to give it an on the fence review.

A young woman has just landed in England, right off a flight from Berlin, and makes her way to the English countryside. At the door to a house that she believes is her own, she goes looking for her keys. In those moments she not only realises she doesn’t have her keys, but her purse is missing and she can’t remember her name. As the door opens and the couple that live in the house welcome her in sympathy, they also think this women knows more than she is willing to share. And could someone in this house, and even the village, know who she is, even if they’ve never seen her before?

Let me first say, there is WAY too much going on in this book. The amount of story lines and plot twists that take place gave me serious whiplash. I had a hard time keeping up with all the characters and who was doing what, and with whom. Again, less is more! While I was able to finish this in one sitting, it was way too long, it needed to be condensed down. One has to ask, did this not get edited? There were chapters that could have been taken out, let alone characters that shouldn’t have been written in.

Putting that all aside, the first half of this book was rather good. From pacing and compelling plot twists, I genuinely was interested. But then it became a jumbled mess and in an irritable mood, I quickly read to the end to see what the hell was happening. After the whole plot reveal happened, which I will not spoil, I had a wee bit of a heart-to-heart with this book realising it had a positive message it was trying to covey. Hurt and abused women will seek out horrific, yet manipulative, revenge on men when they have the chance. So, don’t mess with women, because they’ll get on a flight and bring down a cruel, but devious wrath on you!

Putting aside the unnecessary length, the pointless secondary characters, plot twists that didn’t make sense and how farfetched the whole story is — The Last Thing She Remembers by J.S. Monroe was a solid ‘meh’ from me. At times I wondered why I was still reading this book, but I hate not finishing a book. So, let’s just say I was rather grateful when I came to the acknowledgement page. The only reason I am giving this three stars is for the excellent portrayal of a vengeful, yet unconventional villain. For all the men reading this review, heed this warning, do not open the door to young, beautiful strange women and then proceed to let them stay the night. Bitches be crazy! Nonetheless, I’d skip this book.

Thank you to NetGalley, Harper Collins and J.S. Monroe for an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

*3.5 stars rounded up

The narrator of this thriller is a young woman who appears to be suffering from some form of amnesia. She arrives at the front door of an English cottage, convinced it is her home. The stunned home-owners bring her in and contact their doctor who soon warns them that she could be a woman convicted of manslaughter for killing her best friend, and who did indeed once live in their house.

The plot then does some interesting twists and turns and we realize our narrator is VERY unreliable. Her portions of the story are told in first person point of view, while the rest of the story is done in third-person narrative.

Who is she really and why did she show up in this village? Hang on for a crazy ride!

I received an arc of this thriller from the publisher via NetGalley. I enjoyed the book and am grateful for the opportunity given me.

I’ve been in a weird reading mood lately y’all, I’m either absolutely raving about a book and pushing everyone to read it or I hate it and am pissy. Just wanted to put that out there before I get started on my thoughts about this one because unfortunately this one fell on the the I didn’t like it all side of things 🤷‍♀️

I’m not going to sit here and completely bash this one but I do wanna quickly share why it didn’t work for me. I wasn’t invested in the characters and I think it’s partly because there were way too many of them and none were fully fleshed out. They were very one dimensional to me and I just didn’t really care what happened to them in the end. I also felt like it was longer than it needed to be and I really had to push myself to finish, and I’m talking once I got to like eighty percent. That’s never a good sign for me, usually when I’m reading a thriller the ending is where I’m hooked and don’t want to put it down and I didn’t feel like that here at all. The plot itself was fine, at least most of it but I did find certain aspects to be far fetched and just highly unbelievable. Overall I just didn’t care for this one, the characters, the writing, the story, I was very apathetic about the whole thing and I can’t say I recommend it.

Excellent start that draws the reader right into the story. I was captivated wanting to know who "Jemma" was and why she had lost her memory.
Then, there are quite a few chapters of absolutely unbelievable weirdness that just made me wonder what was going on and why "Jemma" was blindly following Tony (who was also behaving bizarrely) and why she was so scared of everyone trying to find out who she was.
Then...all of the pieces start coming together and there are some intriguing twists. Everything finally makes sense in the end, why everyone was acting the way they were acting and why they made the choices they did. I was completely satisfied...until...the author had to throw in one last "twist" that just irritated me. It's like sometimes the author just doesn't know when to quit and let everything just settle
All in all, this is a solid thriller that should keep readers intrigued throughout. Stick with it through the weird parts because it will all make sense in the end. This is a prime example of a book that I might have possibly given up on if I wasn't reading it for review and I would have missed out on a wild story.

3.5 Stars ⭐⭐⭐💫
There was a lot going on in this novel, but still it kept me engaged. I got through the story in just two sittings. Amnesia as a plot device has been done before, but something about The Last Thing She Remembers rang as unique.

The story was told in first person present when in the main character's POV and third person present from a few secondary characters' POV. I thought the author did a great job making it clear who's POV we were in with every change, and I never felt overwhelmed or confused.

I liked that there were two mysteries or plots unraveling within the story, and certain things played out with dramatic flair.
As the end of the novel was approaching, I got that unrealistic, "over the top" feeling, but it still had some twist and shock value, which I appreciated.

The Last Thing She Remembers is the first book I have read by JS Monroe and though I didn't love it, I liked it enough. I'd be interested in reading more of the author's work.






**Thank you to Park Row Books and Harlequin Books for providing me with a complimentary copy for review. All opinions expressed here are honest and entirely my own.**