Book Review - Forgotten by Heleyne Hammersley

Amazon UK

Title: Forgotten

Author: Heleyne Hammersley

Format reviewed: Ebook

Source: Author supplied review copy

Publisher: Bloodhound Books

Publication Date: 29th April 2016

Rating: 4 Stars

What if you woke up in a strange place and didn’t know who you were?

A woman wakes up in a Thai hospital unaware of how she got there or who she is. The doctor names her Kai, the Thai word for fever.

Unable to recall what led her to end up at the bottom of a cliff, Kai’s only clue to her identity is a diary. Stuck in a foreign land with no memory, she begins to unpick the truth about her past. And she will discover who she is and why she is in danger…

This is Kai’s story.

Forgotten is a a bit of a mixture of a story. It is certainly intriguing, interesting and fascinating  but at the same time, since its being advertised as a psychological thriller, for me it was missing the must read sensation, and the the overall climax which you may expect to be thrilling, was to me anti climatic. 

However what I absolutely loved was Kai's journal, where she is explaining her travels in the Far East up to the point before she has her accident and develops amnesia. The majority of the story is told through the journal entries, and takes you on a trip through China, Laos and parts of Thailand, visiting temples, and all the while hinting at things in Kai's past that are unsavoury, and the reason for her being on the trip. 

There are some chapters that hint at a current threat, but its made fairly obvious to an experienced reader just who the threat is, but I was still curious to see how it would all play out. 

Kai though is not the most reliable of narrators in the present tense, due to her amnesia. It is hard to tell exactly what she is genuinely remembering and what she is reading in her journal. The doctors at the hospital try to help, but I just had the sense of mistrust about everything from Kai. 

Forgotten was an interesting read, but as I say I feel it was slightly confused as to what sort of book it was. To me it read like a travelogue with the added intrigue of some danger, which I did like, but I kind of would have loved to have a larger sense of danger, and for those chapters to either be more frequent, or expanded. 

The ending almost felt a bit rushed, and after a run of books where I have been wishing they were shorter, in this case I would have loved it to have been longer, just so that some of themes could have been developed further. 

Thank you so much to Heleyne Hammersley for this review copy. This was my honest opinion. 

Please do check out Heleyne on Truth or Lie which has also gone live today! 

Funday Friday - Truth or Lie? Heleyne Hammersley - Month 5 Week 2

Welcome to the latest edition of Truth of Lie. My name is Rachel and I will be your host, for this exciting new game show. Each Friday, I will have one contestant, and they will be answering at least 14 questions. There is of course one small twist...

For three of the answers, they have to lie. It is your task as the viewer to guess which three answers are lies. You are allowed 3 guesses and I want them posted into the comments field. 

Every 4 weeks, I will close the guessing, count up how many correct answers each of you has, and create a leaderboard. Anyone who is top of the leaderboard, will go into a draw for a paperback of the winners choice (open internationally). 

Please do include a way for me to contact you (email or twitter or similar), so that I can let you know if you have won. 

The weekend after a 4 week period closes, not only will I produce a leaderboard, and announce a winner, I will also let you know into the true answers, and which were the lies.  

Closing date for the fifth month is 11pm on 29th September 2016. 

So without further ado, let's meet today's contestant. 

Good morning contestant, please can you tell me your name and a little bit about yourself?

Hi.  I’m Heleyne Hammersley. I write psychological thrillers – my first, Forgotten, was published by Bloodhound Books in May. I live in Cumbria – a fantastic place to be if you like fell walking and rain!

Please to meet you Heleyne, delighted to have you on Rachel's Random Reads and I hope to read Forgotten soon. 

Now onto the show, and remember everyone, Heleyne hasn't been entirely truthful with three of these answers, so it is up to you to guess which ones they are (only 3 guesses per person though). 

1)  Who is your favourite author?  

Margaret Atwood – I really like her speculative fiction and her disordered view of our future.  

2) What book do you wish you had written?

To Kill a Mockingbird.  I’d love to have written a book that has touched so many lives.  I almost felt a sense of disappointment when Lee released Go Set a Watchman because I always thought that, if you only had one book in you, how fantastic for it to be a book like TKAM.

3) Tell me about any really memorable dream or nightmare you have had.

I dream a lot – sometimes when I’m awake and supposed to be doing other things!  I have a recurring nightmare about living in a house that is rotting/collapsing/flooding and there’s nothing that I can do about it.

4) What was your most memorable holiday ever?

My partner and I took a year off work to travel through SE Asia, New Zealand, India and Eastern Europe – does that count as a holiday?  So many memories – some of which appear in Forgotten.

5)  If you could be an animal what would you be and why?

I’d like to be my pet terrier, Jess.  She seems to have such a stress-free life – lots of eating and sleeping with a bit of walking and the occasional holiday in our campervan.  As I’m writing this she’s snoring on the sofa bed behind me.

6) What superpower would you love to have?

The ability to fly – I hate aeroplanes and traffic jams!

7) What is the most annoying interview question you have ever been asked?

During an interview for an English teaching position I was once asked whether I’d mind teaching some PE each week.  I’d already said that I wasn’t very sporty in response to a question about my interests and I suspect it was a ruse to put me off the job.  

8) What is your dream job, and have you tried to achieve it?

I’d like to be an archaeologist – and not even an adventurous one like Indiana Jones.  I love ancient history and always thought I’d be happy scrabbling around in the dirt looking for bits of pottery. I’ve done a couple of online courses but that’s as close as I’ve come to actually trying it out.

9) Can you describe for me what your perfect day would involve?

Probably sprawling out on a beach somewhere warm and sunbathing for an entire day with nothing to do and nowhere to be.  

10) Besides reading, which I am guessing is a given, what other hobbies do you have?

I play guitar very badly!  I like to pretend I’m Joni Mitchell or, when the neighbours are out, Joan Jett but I can only manage a few basic chords.  

11) Did you have an invisible friend as a child? If so please tell me about them. 

My invisible friend was a Native American girl called Taweena.  I don’t think I really believed in her; I just made her up to entertain some of my non-invisible friends.  She was very daring and enjoyed climbing across rooftops and shinning up drainpipes.

12) What is your guilty pleasure when it comes to music? 

I like to listen to eighties pop when I’m cooking.  

13) If you could only look at one view for the rest of eternity, what or where would you like to be to see this view?

Noup Head on Westray, Orkney.  I once lay on the cliffs there peering down into beautiful, blue water watching a pod of orcas swimming around below me.  I’d happily look at that for the rest of eternity.

14) Can you let us in on an embarrassing secret?

I have a picture of myself, topless, in a bar swigging from a bottle.  Admittedly I was five years old, it was a burger bar and it was a bottle of Coke!

Thank you so much Heleyne for that interesting set of answers. I love the idea of a Native American invisible friend, and would love to hear far more about your travels. 

I hope you have enjoyed this edition of Truth or Lie? I will be back next week with another episode, and in the mean time...

Don't forget to guess the lies, to be in with a chance of a prize! 

Link to Forgotten on Amazon.co.uk

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Forgotten-truly-gripping-psychological-thriller-ebook-x/dp/B01EZX7REO/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1462473865&sr=1-1&keywords=heleyne+hammersley