Summary:
Jessie Sloane is on the path to rebuilding her life after years of caring for her ailing mother. She rents a new apartment and applies for college. But when the college informs her that her social security number has raised a red flag, Jessie discovers a shocking detail that causes her to doubt everything she’s ever known.
Finding herself suddenly at the center of a bizarre mystery, Jessie tumbles down a rabbit hole, which is only exacerbated by grief and a relentless lack of sleep. As days pass and the insomnia worsens, it plays with Jessie’s mind. Her judgment is blurred, her thoughts are hampered by fatigue. Jessie begins to see things until she can no longer tell the difference between what’s real and what she’s only imagined.
Meanwhile, twenty years earlier and two hundred and fifty miles away, another woman’s split-second decision may hold the key to Jessie’s secret past. Has Jessie’s whole life been a lie or have her delusions gotten the best of her?
My take: 2 looks
Originally reviewed February 12, 2019
Eden and Jessie tell their tales, twenty years apart. Two women, desperate in very different ways, but with love at the core of their issues. As we learn more and more about these women, and how they are ultimately related, the reader is slowly taken into a vortex of memories, desires, dreams, and perhaps even hallucinations.
While this book was easy to read, and simple to get through, it was not compelling. I didn’t have an investment in the characters, or what happened to them. I found Eden’s story drawn out toward an end that was extremely predictable and a bit prosaic, and Jessie’s story completely non plausible and hard to believe. Even in light of the end, with the situations becoming clear and characters taking their rightful places, I found it a ho-hum ending, and not the jaw-dropper that the author intended.
Not recommended.
