I Remember You

"I woke up with a dead woman's memories in my head. Ever since then, people have been trying to kill me."

I Remember You is the fourth stand-alone novel by best-selling American author, Brian Freeman. When twenty-nine-year-old Hallie Evers wakes up in a Las Vegas hospital bed, she's surprised to be alive. After all, with an existing heart condition and a habit of purging, she knew that a bump of coke on top of being legless drunk was probably a bad idea.

But cut the girl some slack: she'd just lost her job (again), been dumped by her boyfriend (by text) for the roommate she thought was her best friend: "I was jobless, moneyless, friendless, sexless, and homeless" all on the same day, the Fourth of July. Just her luck, it was at a MedX cocktail party, and a certain Dr Reed Smith had an AED, and bingo, dead Hallie alive again.

Only, it seems crowded in her head. And awful nightmares: blood on her hands, her dead sister on the grass (she doesn't have a sister!), a bloody golf club, a statue of Poseidon. They become waking dreams, and Hallie is convinced her mind is accommodating another's thoughts and feelings.

And is she being watched, followed? Or has she inherited her mother's paranoia? But then people start dying around her… and trying to kill her!

Her inexplicable familiarity with Boston (she's never been) and a few other details she has put together have her pointing her car towards the east coast, determined to track down Reed Smith and find out exactly what happened. Maybe that will explain why people are after her.

When she does find out, there's a murder from a decade earlier that the person in her head seems to be pushing her to learn the truth about. And the more questions she asks, the more people seem to have had a motive to commit murder.

Freeman gives the reader a cleverly plotted tale with plenty of red herrings and distractions to keep the reader guessing right up to the dramatic nail-biting climax. Not a lot of suspension of disbelief is needed for the speculative aspect of this crime thriller, and even the most astute reader is unlikely to pick the perpetrator.

Freeman conveys his setting with consummate ease and there are some interesting and clever turns of dialogue between Hallie and those who know about her "passenger", and even a unique sort of love triangle. This one is unputdownable!

This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer.