Tag Archives: amnesia

have you seen me? by Kate White

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have you seen me? by Kate White is an excellent novel of mystery, suspense, and nail-biting thrills.

The book opens with main character Ally Linden arriving to her workplace an hour earlier than everyone else. However, she soon remembers that she has not worked there in five years- and even more troubling, she doesn’t remember where she has been for the last three days.

Determined to find out what caused her fugue state and what she did, Ally hires two private investigators to retrace her steps for those three days. Quickly, questions begin to pop up- why didn’t her husband report her missing? Where have her purse and phone gone? Do the bloodstained tissues in her pocket mean something? Could the episode be related to a traumatic incident she experienced in her past? Every time we think we’ve figured it out, a new twist reveals that everything is not as it seems.

I really liked this book! The surprise ending left me in complete shock- I’m usually very good at guessing what’ll happen at the end of suspense novels and solving the mystery, but the resolution of this book completely caught me by surprise- it was ingenious. White used diversion and opaque writing masterfully to her advantage, weaving the perfect web of suspense. While the writing was a little too technical in some parts (financial journalism was described in excruciating detail), I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a dark suspense thriller.

-Vaidehi B.

have you seen me? by Kate White is available for checkout from the Mission Viejo Library. It can also be downloaded for free from Libby.

The Other Side of Dark by Joan Lowery Nixon

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I read this book a while ago because my mother gave it to me as a gift. Of course I was going to read it. When I first read it, I thought whatever about it until I re-read it. I mean the girl wakes up from coma at age 17 after her house was attacked and her mother was killed. She was in a coma for 4 years! The crazy thing is that she was the only person that saw the person who killed her mother.

Stacy is now trying to recover memories with the help of new face Jeff. So many twists, lies, and secrets to discover with the mental age of 13, in a 17 year old body. Who can she trust? Who can she not trust? Who should she listen to and so forth?

This was a fun thriller that I took my time with because I could. If you are looking for a suspenseful, thrilling, and eerie book this is definitely the read for you! I highly recommend this book even though it was written quite a while ago.

-Coralie D.

The Other Side of Dark by Joan Lowery Nixon is available to download for free from Libby.

Book Review: The Maze Runner by James Dashner

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The Maze Runner is the first book of the Maze Runner trilogy written by James Dashner and published in 2009. The Maze Runner follows the main character Thomas. Thomas wakes up in an elevator, called The Box, along with animals and other shipments, without any memories of anything except his name. When the box stops moving, the light shines in showing silhouettes of teenage boys all staring down at him. He meets Newt, Alby, Minho, and Chuck who show him around the Glade which is the area in the middle of the large Maze surrounding them.

Around them is the Maze with four doors into the maze that close at night. Thomas wants to become a runner like Minho. Runners run through the Maze and map it trying to find a way out. At night, monsters called Grievers roam the Maze and after Thomas saves Minho and Alby when they get stuck in the Maze overnight, he becomes a real runner and makes more progress than anyone else. Shortly after, a girl in a coma known as Teresa arrives along with their last shipment. Everyone becomes suspicious of Thomas since all the strange happenings start when he arrives. But when everything changes, Thomas and his new friends try to solve the Maze and find a way out.

The Maze Runner is a dystopian science fiction young adult novel that includes an interesting story making you want to read the next book to find out what happens next. It’s a thrilling and suspenseful book that gives unexpected twists and turns with the characters. Each character acts the same and have the same beliefs as each other but, have small differences shaping their personality. The descriptions of the characters also help shape them in a way for the reader to envision them properly. Some of the characters are a bit bland but the other characters are very likable. My favorite character is Newt because of his personality,how independent he is, and how he keeps everything in place.

The Maze Runner has an interesting story which includes different mysteries that need to be solved. It is intriguing and sucks you into the story. I was excited and wanted to read this book for a little while after hearing how much people liked it but was somewhat hesitant after also seeing some bad reviews. It was fun to see secrets unfold and the mystery of the Maze come to light. Even though the book was a bit slow at times and ends in a cliff hanger, it was well written and I still thoroughly enjoyed the book and am looking forward to reading the next book in the series, The Scorch Trials.

-Nicole R.

The Maze Runner by James Dashner is available for checkout from the Mission Viejo Library

The Maze Runner by James Dashner

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If you wish to read The Maze Runner, you’re in for a long adventure, totaling in four books and two behind the scenes books. Once you start, you cannot stop. Prepare to be thrown headfirst into a whirlwind of life, death, happiness, sadness, love, and hatred.

We begin in the Box. We watch as Thomas, the main character, is thrown into a community of 40-50 boys, who live in a place they’ve come to call ‘the Glade’. We learn that the place these boys live I see actually a maze, surrounding the Glade on all sides. The boys have been trying to figure out the maze for two years, and a new boy, or Glader, is sent up in the Box every month. Just like clockwork, one boy every month, none of which have any memories, except their names.

The boys in the Glade have developed a system, to keep them from going crazy. A boy named Alby is the leader, with a boy named Newt as his second in command. There are 9 jobs in the Glade: Builer, Slicer, Cooks, Track-Hoes, Med-Jacks, Baggers, Sloppers’ Brick-Nicks, and Runners. Being a Runner is the most dangerous job, because it is your job to run through the Maze and memorize the corridors. Then, you must return to the Glade, and write down what you’ve memorized.

You may ask, ‘well, why is this job so dangerous?’ This is because in the Maze, monsters come out at night. They are called ‘Grievers’ by the Gladers, and are disgusting, fleshy creatures that roam the Maze at night. If you are stung by one of these creatures, you go through something called the Changing, which gives you back your memories in a painful process.

Thomas, of course, wishes to become a Runner. We all assume that he will lead a happy life in the Glade, and that perhaps he and the boys will be able to escape. But, as usual in adventure books, something happens.

A girl comes up in the Box, only a day afterward Thomas. She is delivered with a note explaining that she is the last one. She is in a coma, only speaking a few words, such as ‘I’ve triggered the Ending.’

The Maze Runner is a fast paced, exciting book. Many will enjoy to twists and turns of the thrilling adventure novel created by James Dashner. I highly suggest this book!

-Sophia D.

The Maze Runner by James Dashner is available for checkout from the Mission Viejo Library

The One Memory of Flora Banks by Emily Barr

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If I am honest, I was extremely annoyed with this book at the beginning. Flora Banks has no short term memory which means that essentially every page repeats the same information, which was extremely frustrating. I almost gave up on reading the book, but I never stop halfway when reading.

I am glad I kept with it. Either Flora’s memory got better or I got used to reading repetitive information, but I enjoyed the book. The story follows Flora, a girl stuck in time. She takes an insane amount of medicine to help her memory, which she has been told is faulty because of a disease she was diagnosed with when she was 10. She has clear memories of her life before her diagnosis, but until she kissed Drake, every memory slipped her grasp.

While Flora seemed to be a dependent young girl, she proved herself over and over again. Without her parents, and facing a fallout with her best friend, Flora is alone to fend for herself. And to find Drake, because if he helped Flora remember one memory, maybe he can fix her memory altogether. However, Flora has to rely on notes to herself to remember everything. So taking a trip to the Arctic Circle is not an easy task.

This novel is a great selection for teens, provided that the repetition at the beginning of the novel is not too discouraging.

– Leila S., 12th grade

The One Memory of Flora Banks by Emily Barr is available for checkout from the Mission Viejo Library. 

With Malice by Eileen Cook

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Get ready to clear your schedule because With Malice by Eileen Cook will keep you hooked and unwilling to put her story down. Yale-bound, 18-year-old Jill Charron’s life is turned around when she wakes up in a hospital bed with a big blank where the memories of the past six weeks should be. Learning that she was in a cataclysmic car accident, she is shocked when she learnt it happened in her dream school trip abroad in Italy. Struggling to recover from her injuries sustained in the accident, she is startled to discover her best friend of over ten years, Simone, is dead.

Furthermore, she discovers her affluent father has hired a top-notch lawyer because the car accident and Simone’s death are being investigated as a murder, and Jill is being accused of causing Simone’s death. Simultaneously recovering from her injuries, and dealing with the aftermath of the accident, Jill must piece together the glimpses of memories she has to figure out what really happened to her best friend.

As I read this book, I was completely enamored with the story, and I could not put it down. The concept of the story may not be unique, but it was told in a way that made it seem like it was. The way Jill was portrayed in the story was accurate and she seemed like a real person. The ending fell a little bit flat, but overall the story was engrossing.

-Anmol K.

With Malice by Eileen Cook is available for checkout from the Mission Viejo Library. It can also be downloaded from Overdrive.