Thoughts: What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty

It is 1998, Alice is 29 years old and happily married to Nick, expecting their first baby and renovating their house.  One day Alice wakes up on the floor of a gym (she hates the gym!) after passing out and hitting her head in spin class (what is a spin class?).  Knowing that she is pregnant she freaks out and worries about the baby only to find out that there is no baby, she isn't pregnant, it is actually 2008, she is 39 years old and she is the Mother of 3 children, her and Nick are getting a divorce and the house they were renovating is all done.  She can't remember a thing from the past 10 years.  What is going on?

This story is told from Alice's perspective with diary entries written by her Sister, Elisabeth, to her therapist and letters her surrogate Grandmother, Frannie, writes to her dead Fiance, Phil, interspersed throughout.  As the story unfolds we slowly find out what kind of person Alice had turned into during the past 10 years and why her life has turned out the way that it has.  How did she go from being blissfully happy with Nick to having him hate her and barely be able to be in the same room as her?  How did her Sister go from being her best friend to someone who has distanced herself from Alice?  How can she not remember her own children?

This book started off just OK, it didn't really suck me in at first.  But as the details of Alice's life slowly unfolded I began to get more invested in her life.  I thought it was so interesting to see how the choices you make and the things that you say and do really all come together to form the person you are and how people perceive you.  Alice losing her memory forces her to go back over the last 10 years and look at the events that have shaped her into who she is and look at them in a new way.  It was really interesting.  It turns out that losing her memory was actually good for Alice and her journey was really fun to read.

I rated this book 4 out of 5 stars.