Book Review & Summary
When twenty-eight-year-old Lexi Smart wakes up in a London hospital, she’s in for a big surprise. Her teeth are perfect. Her body is toned. Her handbag is Vuitton. Having survived a car accident—in a Mercedes no less—Lexi has lost a big chunk of her memory, three years to be exact, and she’s about to find out just how much things have changed.
Somehow Lexi went from a twenty-five-year-old working girl to a corporate big shot with a sleek new loft, a personal assistant, a carb-free diet, and a set of glamorous new friends. And who is this gorgeous husband—who also happens to be a multimillionaire? With her mind still stuck three years in reverse, Lexi greets this brave new world determined to be the person she…well, seems to be. That is until an adorably dishevelled architect drops the biggest bombshell of all.
Suddenly Lexi is scrambling to catch her balance. Her new life, it turns out, comes complete with secrets, schemes, and intrigue. How on earth did all this happen? Will she ever remember? And what will happen when she does? Remember Me by Sophie Kinsella, is a story nobody should forget to read.
About the author
Sophie Kinsella has sold over 40 million copies of her books in more than 60 countries, and she has been translated into over 40 languages. She first hit the UK bestseller lists in September 2000 with her first novel in the Shopaholic series – The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic (also published as Confessions of a Shopaholic). Sophie wrote her first novel under her real name, Madeleine Wickham, aged 24, whilst she was working as a financial journalist. The Tennis Party was immediately hailed as a success by critics and the public alike and became a top ten bestseller. Sophie was born in London. She studied music at New College, Oxford, but after a year switched to Politics, Philosophy and Economics. She lives in the UK with her husband and family.
This book is of interest for
- Romance
- Humour
- ChickLit
- Young Adult Fiction
Premise of the book
The fun and farcical story of Lexie Smart has the heroine in this tale, Remember Me? wondering how she got to a completely different station in life between the years 2004 and 2007. She believes she’s stumbled into a dream life but soon steps into a hornet’s nest of complications. She also discovers her best mates, a colourful threesome, have grown to hate her.
Self-proclaimed “sucker” Lexi Smart has a thankless job and a boyfriend known as “Loser Dave.” When the book opens, our plucky-in-spite-of-it-all heroine is wrapping up a night out with gal pals in London. Struggling to find a taxi in the rain to take her home, Lexi slips on the slick pavement and…wakes up with retrograde amnesia three years later. Seems Lexi has been busy in recent years—too bad she remembers none of it.
When she opens her eyes, she’s in a first-class hospital room, the victim, doctors say, of a car wreck in her Mercedes. No longer a working-class drone, Lexi now has a Louis Vuitton handbag, and her previously humdrum body is toned and tanned. As she switches into freak-out mode, her sister notifies Lexi that she is also married—to a square-jawed, hunky millionaire. Talk about getting lucky! Hilarity ensues as Lexi attempts to reclaim her past and negotiate her dazzling present while contemplating an even more wondrous romance with a black-jeans-clad architect. That Lexi discovers that her transformation from worker to boss turned her from good buddy to bitch adds a bit of morality-tale vinegar to this sugar-shock tale.
“The trouble with giving yourself a pep talk is, that deep down you know it’s all bullshit.”
Sophie Kinsella is a masterful storyteller; she mixes real life with just enough drama to carry you along and helps you invest in her characters. She takes Lexi from an average “any woman” to an ambitious, super styler who now has the sleek body of an athlete and makes us all wish that we could be her; then Sophie switches it up and we discover that there are cracks in the perfect exterior and that not everything is picture-perfect.
“The thing with giving up is you never know. You never know whether you could have done the job.”
The story gets even more involved when we find out that Lexi’s last memory is indeed from three years earlier, but that the reason she’s in the hospital is because of a very recent car accident. Somehow her brain injury jumps her memory back three years and it was during those three years that she consciously made all the changes in her life. She just doesn’t remember how or why. She decides to jump right in, thinking that if she plays along, hopefully her memory will return. So she moves in with her gorgeous husband, makes plans to visit her job and see her friends. She just can’t understand why she’s no longer tight with the girls at work that she used to always hang out with.
Readers are treated to a mystery as Lexi takes on the task of discovering who she is and what is really important to her – she learns just what events sparked the tremendous changes in her life and as she gets to know herself, she discovers who she really wants to be. We ride along with Lexi as she takes on challenges and wonders if she’ll ever regain her memory and if or when she does, how will it change her life?
Kinsella’s strength has always been her ability to create an amusing, fast-paced narrative, and coupled with the amnesia plot, you really wouldn’t want to put this book down. Remember to pick it up soon!
If you have read Remember Me by Sophie Kinsella, I am keen to know your thoughts on this book.