This is a heavy, tough read. It was a bit disturbing at first, then was kind of slow in the middle. There are a lot of characters & it jumped around quite a bit. Once I got about half way through, the story picked up in pace and interest so I pushed through and finished.

3.5 stars

I almost gave this one a miss. I had read some mixed reviews by some of my most trusted goodreads friends, and when I started the first few paragraphs I thought I was going to finish this book before it began. However I am glad that I stuck with it and read on. The second half was so much better than the first and ultimately I enjoyed the twists. However I couldn't go above a 3.5.

Young Jenny is brutally assaulted at a party when she is 15 years old. Given a drug that creates an amnesiac effect, she loses her memory about the incident. However as the title suggests, all is not forgotten and even though her memory of the incident has gone, the trauma of it still remains. Told in first person by the therapist, the pieces of the puzzle soon begin to unravel.

I enjoyed the way that the narration was set out, with the therapist telling the story from his perspective, with everything second hand. It was a clever way to tell the story, however I didn't much like the character and he tended to go on and on about stuff that was totally irrelevant. None the less once you got through the slow parts there was an interesting story underneath which kept me enthralled.

The graphic scenes, however I did not enjoy. Described numerous times and in extremely intricate detail, the gruesome sexual assault of the poor girl will be too much for many readers to tolerate. I found myself skipping over parts of the graphic detail just to move on to the next part of the story.

I was also disappointed that it didn't delve into the amnesiac drug a bit more. It's kind of the Tagline of the story, she is given this drug and it's amazing, like it's a huge part of the storyline. But I thought there was going to be more about it.

Would I recommend All is Not Forgotten?

Not for everyone. A gripping psychological thriller it was, but with extremely graphic rape scenes which will not be everyone's cup of tea.

I have read Reece Wotherspoon's production company is making it into a movie. I will definitely watch it when it comes out. She always does a good job with her book to movie adaptations and will hopefully weed out some of the duller parts.

Big thanks to netgalley and the author for a copy of All is Not Forgotten for me to review.

Teenager Jenny Kramer attends a high school party where most of her town’s young people are in attendance. Friends and people she has grown up with in a small town. Children of family friends. Making the decision to leave the party early, Jenny is brutally attacked nearby by an assailant whose face she never sees. As the teenager struggles to deal with both the mental and physical trauma, Jenny’s parents make the decision to allow medics try a new drug on their daughter that will serve to delete the immediate painful memories of the attack.

Charlotte and Tom Kramer come to regret that decision as they witness Jenny’s struggle to return to her former self in the following months. In comes Dr Forrester, who currently is dealing with a volatile male client who has also has lost trauma memories. It is the belief of the psychiatrist that recovering those lost memories will greatly aid his patients on their road to recovery.

As it is with all books written in the first person narrative, we are required to spend a lot of our reading time immersed in the thoughts of one character. Dr Alan Forrester is also seeing the parents of the victim, and believes in the holistic approach of counseling the entire family. Or is that what he is really doing?

As the doctor pontificates on about his psychiatric profession as it now relates his new case, three quarters of this book become quite soporific to read. In its last quarter ALL IS NOT FORGOTTEN however finds its feet and we are dragged onwards to the conclusion with ill feeling. This is not a novel about the victim of a violent crime; we don’t in fact hear much from the victim. The book is full of self-serving individuals who all have a connection to our narrator, the narcissistic psychiatrist who has an agenda of his own that is always at the forefront. It is very much a book about avoidance.

It does feel too much too late when we are introduced to the major plot twist; backstory at the end when it could have been fed through the narrative to create a greater sense of foreboding. ALL IS NOT FORGOTTEN is an uneasy dark thriller that has a very, very slow burn. It does give an interesting alternate viewpoint to the ripple effect of a violent crime in a small community where each decision made and each confidence revealed can catalyst further catastrophic events.