Unremembered

Unremembered

By Jessica Brody

Published on March 5, 2013
Published by: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux
Source: ARC from publisher

The only thing worse than forgetting her past... is remembering it.

When Freedom Airlines flight 121 went down over the Pacific Ocean, no one ever expected to find survivors. Which is why the sixteen-year-old girl discovered floating among the wreckage—alive—is making headlines across the globe.

Even more strange is that her body is miraculously unharmed and she has no memories of boarding the plane. She has no memories of her life before the crash. She has no memories period. No one knows how she survived. No one knows why she wasn’t on the passenger manifest. And no one can explain why her DNA and fingerprints can’t be found in a single database in the world.

Crippled by a world she doesn’t know, plagued by abilities she doesn’t understand, and haunted by a looming threat she can’t remember, [she] struggles to piece together her forgotten past and discover who she really is. But with every clue only comes more questions. And she’s running out of time to answer them.

Her only hope is a strangely alluring boy who claims to know her from before the crash. Who claims they were in love. But can she really trust him? And will he be able to protect her from the people who have been making her forget?

From popular young adult author, Jessica Brody comes a mesmerizing and suspenseful new series, set in a world where science knows no boundaries, memories are manipulated, and true love can never be forgotten.

Unremembered is a fast-paced story following "Violet" as she struggles to regain her memory and fit into a world of which she has no memory or understanding. (The actual book blurb gives away Violet's real name, but I've chosen to remove it here, as her discovering it is kind of a plot point. Just be warned if you read the summary of the book anywhere, however.) She goes to live with a foster family as authorities struggle to find out who she is and where she came from (and how she survived the plane crash), but Violet quickly starts to feel that not all is as it seems with her situation.

I liked Violet a lot, even though I initially felt confused by her and her reactions to her situation. She's very emotionless -- some people even describe her as robotic -- and has a hard time connecting with people because she has no context to understand them. Even her memories of things like cell phones and television are gone. So she can be a little hard to relate to, but she catches on very quickly, and shows a few flashes of real emotion from time to time when situations get especially fraught with danger.  Also, many of the things I didn't initially like or understand about the way Violet was written -- including the book's extreme focus on how stunningly beautiful she is -- are eventually explained in the plot.  I still have issues with them, especially the focus on her beauty -- pretty much everyone who she meets comments on how she is the "ideal" beauty, with her "honey-brown hair and smooth golden skin" -- but at least they try to explain that as a plot point rather than just another typical story about an extremely stereotypically pretty girl.)

I am not completely sure how I felt about this book. I finished it really quickly -- Jessica Brody's writing is engaging and moves things along at a very fast pace -- and definitely did not find myself getting bored. At the same time, I felt that the plot was a little too predictable, and I didn't completely buy into the epic romance that drives the latter half of the story. I never really felt a spark between Violet and this boy from her past.  I know they're in love because the book tells us they are, but it didn't feel authentic to me -- maybe because the story was told in Violet's voice, which can be very analytic and clinical, rather than passionate and emotional.   (Or it could be because I am a jaded 30-year old and not a 16-18 year old who is all about true love and soul mates.)

Despite the drawbacks, I did enjoy this book and will probably find myself reading the sequel that the ending of the book clearly sets up.  Overall, it was a pretty clean read, I think with only a little bit of profanity, some kissing, several intense chase scenes and some violence, but nothing graphically described.