Interesting though somewhat slow moving at times. I almost didn’t finish the book, but there was something about the story that pulled me along nonetheless.

This one was a DNF for me! There were just too many things I felt were triggering for me. I should have read more content warnings for this one. Definitely suggest doing your research before diving into this one!

The Day She Died is an exciting but confusing novel about a woman who experiences an accident that causes a brain injury. The chapters switch between her life recovering from this injury and the memories of her childhood birthdays. She has had multiple people close to her pass away under mysterious circumstances and the reader gets small snippets of the events that lead to these deaths.

Honestly, while I did enjoy this book, it was pretty confusing to read as every chapter would be set in a different time and trying to keep up with what was happening and the different story lines took me out of the story. The premise itself was really cool and I wish that it was written in a way that made a bit more sense for the plot.

3/5 stars. Thank you to Netgalley and the author for this copy to review.

Nothing is ever quite as it seems in Eve Gold's life. Or in her death.

The tale starts on her 27th birthday with a chance accident and elides backwards as well as forward. Grim future is filled with hospital rooms, rehabilitation and a deep dive into traumatic brain injury. The past segments are lyrical, multi-sensory - their Elysian shimmer not-quite shielding our eyes from the ragged, often wretched childhood beneath.

There's more than one mystery being pieced together here, and a touch of paranormal. The writing is sound, and Eve is a character who engages the reader's sympathy. But there's no denying this is a hard read, dealing with tough topics: child abuse, toxic parenting, mental illness, and physical as well as psychological trauma.

A gripping journey that will have you thinking about death, memory, and the fluidity of time.

This is a new standalone by S M Freedman, author of the Faithful series. The Day She Died is a psychological thriller about Eve Gould who is recovering from a near fatal accident. With two alternating time perspectives, it moves back and forth between the current day accident and flashbacks of various birthdays. Overall, it creates confusion at times as the memory recalls are nonsequential thus somewhat detracting from the narrative. Whilst an interesting premise for a book, it did not flow well, nor build suspense and fell very flat at the ending. Disappointingly, a rare one-star review. With thanks to NetGalley and the author for an advanced reader copy for review purposes. All opinions expressed herein are bias free and totally my own.

Eve has had a lot of bad birthdays but this, her 27th, takes the cake. She's hit by a car and suffers multiple injuries most importantly, a TBI which leaves her dazed and confused about what's real and what's not. Most of this is told in flashbacks centered around accidents, death, mental illness and so on. How reliable is she as a narrator? Well, no one would want to imagine the events in her past but the problem is that this is so mixed up in time an space that it lost me in spots. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Read this as character not plot driven and it's intriguing.

The link expired before I was able to finish this. I was intrigued but do not want to lay to finish. I will say the time jumps were confusing. I’m used to jumps between past and present but in this one, the “past” ones were not linear but jumped around which confused me at times

This is a suspenseful book full of plot twists. The author keeps you wondering what is past, present, imagined or reality as all of these aspects are expertly woven throughout the tale. I thouroughly enjoyed this book and couldn't put it down. A recommended adult read.

I like novels that tell a story in both the present and the past. When an author uses this shifting perspective it’s like getting two mysteries for the price of one. And S.M. Freedman delivers on both in her newest thriller, The Day She Died (Dundurn Press, April 2021).
The book begins with Eve surviving a car crash, just barely. She’s broken just about every bone that matters and suffered a severe brain injury. But despite this she manages to recover, albeit somewhat damaged, just as she did from her childhood which was a vehicle wreck of a different sort. She would have been lost during those years without her best friend, Sara, and Sara’s handsome big brother, Leigh. Leigh rushes to Eve’s bedside after the car crash in the present day, but something appears to have happened between them all those years ago, and perhaps more importantly something happened to Sara. But Eve can’t remember, and Leigh won’t talk about it. Hmm.
This book has more twists than a Yoga Spine class and is evocatively written in a way that can hold its own with literary fiction (think Ashley Audrain’s The Push). Highly recommended.

Full review at https://www.shekillslit.com/2021/04/01/the-day-she-died-by-s-m-freedman/

It was a very tense and emotionally gripping novel
Loved every bit of it
From starting page to ending
Very beautiful style

The story begins with Eve's birth and lets the reader know that she has a "troubled mind".

Changes in "time" made this book a bit difficult to follow. Admittedly, I did leave this read for awhile and read another book.

Although the substance was a bit awkward at certain points, I still found this to be an OK read. It was quick but not too easy to follow throughout>

Many Thanks to Dundurn Press and NetGalley for this read.

This one took me a couple tries to get into for some reason, but once I got there it really took off. From a near death car accident, to the heartbreaking memories and flashbacks. It was gripping.

I received an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book wasn’t my favorite psychological thriller of late, but it was perfectly serviceable and did the job. The epitome of a three star thriller

Thank you to Netgalley and Publisher for this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I don't what happened. Eve lived with her mother and grandmother, her mother doesn't like her and her love for art, so her grandmother takes care of her and her hobbies. Sara is her only friend out there. Leigh is Sara's big brother and Eve's childhood crush. This story kept jumping from past to present, mostly on Eve's birthday. There wasn't any pattern so it was hard to focus and keep events in a sequence. Eve survived an accident but lost fragments of memory and struggling in remembering things. 

This book was a quick read despite all of the to and fro jumping. I kinda enjoyed the start of the book but with the time everything got out of the control. The ending was a disaster and lacking so many things. Things kept happening and so many events didn't make sense. In short, this book was a huge mess.

ARC provided by Netgalley for an honest review.
This is a hard one for me to review. On one hand, the plot was intriguing enough. What makes me rate this so low is that the time frames within the story kept jumping so much, I swear I got whiplash from trying to keep up with what time setting I was reading. This one messes with the reader and makes you question things you've already read.

Yes, yet another one. Categorized by the publisher under thriller and women’s fiction. Because there aren’t enough of those out there. Everyone wants to write one, the author in this instance has more experience to go off of than most, having worked as a private investigator in the wild and dangerous streets of Vancouver, Canada. But the trick to distinguishing oneself in the overpopulated genre is to do something original, so the main question is always…did she do it?
Well, yes and no. I know, I know, a wishy-washy answer, but this book really is a mixed bag. The main thing here is that the character writing is really good, you have these complex layered individuals and genuinely well crafted female relationships and off balanced and creepy male/female ones. The plot, though, is thoroughly muddled by all the time traveling it does. The dizzying skips in chronology by an already addled brain of the protagonist leave something to be desired, although they are essential to the orchestration of the genre prerequisite plot twists. I’m not sure how they should have been handled and I completely understand that the muddleness was meant to be representative of the protagonist’s mental state, but ideally it would have been somewhat more streamlined.
So onto the plot…Eve Gold died. Young. And then ten minutes later was brought back to life. This second chance includes a built in romance with her childhood love (this isn’t as adorable as you might think), a cute kid and a burgeoning art career. But…her traumatized mind won’t let her enjoy it all and memories, like the bodies, just won’t stay buried. And why are people dying around Eve? From her best childhood friend to her mom? What is it that her mind is trying to protect her from? Well, read and find out, after all, it’s all about Eve.
So there you go, a mystery thriller with the classic unreliable narrator. Someone who can’t remember basic things from day to day, let alone her darkest secrets. With a protagonist like that, you pretty much expect the author to mess with you and yet the ending twist is kind of a cheat. Can’t go into it, don’t want to give too much away, but it’s the sort of thing, a narrative trick, that just cheapens the entire experience. You still get all your questions answered and all that, but the wrap up is somewhat less than satisfactory. And it’s certainly been done before. It might have blown someone’s mind the first time around, but not anymore. Now it’s too easy.
And so, there you have it, an overall decent thriller, with above average dramatic writing and average down the line and somewhat clichéd plotting. It’s entertaining enough, certainly, and it goes to some very dark avenues the way some of these thrillers are precluded from by all that extra estrogen of the women’s fiction and it has a terrific grandma named Button, but in the end it doesn’t do enough to elevate itself above the midlevels of the homogenous genre entries. It does read very quickly. Thanks Netgalley.

"May your cloak be thick enough to shield your sanity, and thin enough to expose the gift of each breath."

I received this novel as an ARC from the publisher.

This was a decent read, though I found it difficult to get into, and the wording was odd. It's an interesting mystery bouncing between the past and present, revolving around Eve's violent death. Murder, abuse, and guilt fill insidious memories, keeping the pages turning through to the end--a shock and a half.

Thank you Netgalley and Dundurn Press for the eARC.
This book was mind bending indeed, it took me a while to get into the rhythm of it, but once I did, whoa, what a great read. I won't go into the details of the story, because I might let spoiler details slip.
It starts with our protagonist, Eve, being hit by car so badly, practically every bone in her body is broken and her brain is severely damaged.
We go back and forth between earlier times and the present, meeting Sarah, Eve's best friend, and her brother, who Eve has a crush on.
Filled with dark memories, guilt, possible murders, child neglect and hallucinations, I literally couldn't stop reading till the stunning ending. Highly recommended for readers of intelligent psychological mysteries.

Everything was going good. I was in a groove on the time switches and how fast paced the dialogue was and then I got about 50% in and it switched up again and I had no idea what was going on.

How can you jump from 6 months to 2 years?! And not even clue us in.

The rest of the book I gave up on because I had no idea what was going on but it was a shame because I liked figuring out Eva’s mind and I get the confusing part because she is figuring it out to but it was stunted