This was a thrift store buy on vacation here in Arizona.

The Premise: Lexi Smart is a young woman down in the dumps because her father’s funeral is tomorrow, and she missed getting a nice holiday bonus by a week because she hadn’t worked at her job a full year, and her boyfriend is blowing her off. That’s the last she recalls when she wakes up in a hospital bed and she’s been told that she was just in a car crash. Apparently Lexi has amnesia and has forgotten the last three years.  Three years where she’s lost weight, fixed her hair and teeth, married a gorgeous man and become the boss at her job. What happened? How did she get here? And is her life as perfect as it seems or is what her husband’s architect Jon right — that she was about to leave her husband for him?

Read an excerpt of Remember Me? here

My Thoughts: This reminds me of the Talking Heads song, but you know where it’s going a little bit — of course there’s no story if she wakes up and discovers she’s made something of herself, and that’s it. There’s got to be a problem, and that is that Lexi doesn’t remember her husband at all, and she doesn’t remember doing her job as head of the carpeting department of Dellar Carpets. Lexi is also surprised to find she’s lost her friends and become known as a tough boss (to put it mildly). If you have ever watched the movie 13 Going On 30, you will know Lexi’s reaction to some of what she finds out about her new self.

There’s a certain amount of predictably in the storyline — Lexi being confused by her new life and by who she has become, and some soul searching if this is what she really wants. It’s a light read but not really fluffy — although there are a few glimpses of humor here and there, it’s not as amusing as other Kinsella books. The emotions Lexi goes through doesn’t lend itself to it.

The romance is not as straightforward in this book. Lexi is married, but while he’s handsome and nice, and a millionaire, he’s a complete Type-A personality, with a hatred of disorder and a love of ambition which is at odds with who Lexi is. After a while I started to get creeped out by his over-perfectness, which I guess was the aim of the author, because in contrast, Jon accepts Lexi as she is. He’s her husband’s architect, and he tells her that she was planning to leave her husband for him.  While Lexi finds Jon annoying at first, it’s obvious she finds him attractive, and is freer with her words around him than around her husband.  If you don’t like unfaithfulness in your books, this may be an issue.  I think some of the moral issue is taken away with the idea that what Lexi did in the 3 forgotten years was like it happened to someone else, and although Lexi is shocked at herself, she can’t really feel that guilty about something she doesn’t remember deciding to do. It bothered me a little, but the book doesn’t dwell on it.

Buy: Amazon | Powells

Overall: I thought the book was alright. It was what I expected; a pleasant way to spend the afternoon, with some amusing bits and sweetness in the romance, but not a book that really moved me. I wasn’t wowed, but I wasn’t disappointed either.

Reviews elsewhere:
Rosario’s Reading Journal – B+
Confessions of a book addict – loved it
The Good, The Bad and The Unread – B- (I think I was closest to this reviewer’s feelings on this book)