For this book review I decided to review What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty. I gave this book a five-star rating. I absolutely loved this book and I thought it was an amazing concept of a story. I’m actually jealous that I didn’t think of this when I was writing.
WARNING: Spoil Alert
Alice Love is a twenty-nine year old woman, happily married to her husband Nick and expecting their first child together. Or so she thought!
Alice woke up on the gym floor not knowing where she was. Her spin class friends tell her that she had fainted. She hit her head so hard that she’s forgotten the last ten years of her life. She thought she was still pregnant with her first child and married to her husband. When in actuality, she had three children and now she is separated from the love of her life.
Alice is rushed to the hospital not knowing what is happening. Nobody looks familiar to her, but yet everyone knows her. They call her sister Elisabeth and she doesn’t rush to her side. She calls Nick, but he screams at her. She feels lost and confused. Supposedly all of her relationships crumbled.
Eventually Elisabeth comes to the hospital and Alice realizes that her sister doesn’t seem the same. She’s older, stiff, and cold towards her. They used to have such a wonderful relationship. Elisabeth is flabbergasted by her memory loss. She thought she was faking it, but soon realizes that she is not.
Her mother Barb comes to the hospital and finds out that she was married to Roger, which is Nick’s father. They proceed to tell her that she has three children and Alice is about to lose her mind. She still thinks it’s 2008 and pregnant with her first child.
The doctors send her home, figuring she will regain her memory any day. Her kids are with Nick for the weekend, so Alice doesn’t have to worry about them yet. She’s noticing little flashes here and there of memories, but has no idea what they are or if they are even real. Her sister tries to fill in blanks for her, but has no idea of anything. She’s supposedly dating someone named Dominick, that’s the principal of her kids school. She’s so confused and just wants Nick back. She asks everyone where they went wrong, but nobody can tell her why.
When the weekend came to an end, she anxiously waited for her kids, whom she doesn’t remember and her Nick. She goes outside to greet them and she’s stunned to find out how much they are just like her and Nick with a mix of their own personalities. When she sees Nick, she wants to run to him, but he doesn’t want anything to do with her. They make small talk and he realized that she still has no memory. He’s concerned and asks if he should take the kids and she said no.
As the week unfolds she finds out many interesting things. She had a best friend Gina, who lived next door. They were supposedly inseparable. It turns out that Gina was killed in a freak accident, when a tree landed on her car at a stop sign. Alice and her daughter Madison witnessed the whole thing because they were following her from the gym.
She finds out that Gina’s husband Mike, was caught kissing another woman and that destroyed their marriage, which in turn destroyed Alice and Nick’s marriage.
With Alice losing her memory, she convinces Nick to give her a shot and she tries to break it off with Dominick. She just wants her life back to the way it once was. She discovered in a span of a week, how much she loves her kids and is willing to do anything for them. Supposedly the old Alice was somewhat a cold hearted bitch. Now she has this fresh attitude that everyone likes. They wonder and she wonders if her memory will ever come back.
Alice organized this event that featured the world’s largest lemon meringue pie. It was supposedly Gina’s favorite pie and Alice did this event in honor of her. She convinced a bunch of mother’s and businesses to get together to help her with this process. Their was a band there set to play all Elvis songs, which Gina loved. All of a sudden Alice felt weird, she was weak in the knees, and she was about to pass out. Nick and Dominick came to her aid for they could see something was wrong. As she laid there for a brief moment, she remembered. She remembered EVERYTHING. All the memories came back to her like a flood. Pouring into her. Her kids being born, her best friend Gina, her and Nick’s marriage, and Dominick. She looked at Nick and Dominick and she flinched. Nick knew she regained her memory and walked away.
Flash forward a few years. It turned out that Alice ended up with Nick after all. I was shocked and I was relieved. I thought the ending of this story was great and I was rooting for their relationship to work out. They surprised her with breakfast in bed and she was happy as can be. The knock on her head was a curse but it turned out to be a blessing.
Also a side note that I didn’t really mention. Her sister Elisabeth and her husband were trying to get pregnant for years and did IVF and every time it failed. They were older and Elisabeth was tired of trying. She and her husband were constantly fighting now and it was starting to ruin their marriage. They decided to stop the treatments, but they had to do their last round first. Elisabeth received the news that she was pregnant. She was devastated, figuring she was going to lose this baby as well.
She didn’t! She ended up having a daughter. Alice and her sister became really close again, as they once were ten years prior.
I loved this story, I really praise the author!