Blog Tour & Review: Forgotten

Forgotten by Catherine McKenzie

Format: ebook/ ARC
Pages/Size: 376
Published: May 1, 2012
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Genre: Fiction

My Rating: 4.5/5

 

Summary (from chapters.ca):

Emma Tupper, a young lawyer with a bright future, sets out on a journey after her mother’s death: to Africa, the land to which her mother always wanted to travel. But her mother’s dying gift has unexpected consequences. Emma falls ill during her trip and is just recovering when a massive earthquake hits, turning her one-month vacation into a six-month ordeal.

When Emma returns home, she is shocked to find that her friends and colleagues believed she was dead, that her apartment has been rented to a stranger and that her life has gone on without her. Can Emma pick up where she left off?  Should she?  As Emma struggles to recreate her old life, everyone around her thinks she should change —her job, her relationships and even herself.  But does she really want to sacrifice everything she’s working so hard to regain?

Review:

**NOTE: A copy of this book was provided by the publisher.  However, no compensations were made and this review reflects my honest thoughts and feelings.**

What if you were given a second chance at choosing the path your life would take.  Would you stay on the same path as you were?  Would you make subtle changes or would you simply start with a blank slate?  For Emma, the choice isn't as clear as you would think.

I adore reading novels by Canadian authors and I was so happy when I was contacted to be part of the blog tour for Catherine McKenzie's newest novel, Forgotten, that I jumped right on board.  Having never read one of her novels before, I wasn't sure what to expect but boy, was I ever happy with the results.

Forgotten opened up so many questions for me.  It had me talking to absolutely everyone who would listen and, most of all, it allowed me to think outside of the box.

Living a life driven by deadlines and never taking time to 'stop and smell the roses', Emma found herself on a plane to a foreign country with a group of strangers.  What a crazy thing to imagine... going away, alone... for a month.  What I loved most about this book was the way in which Catherine told the story.  The six-months in which Emma was 'missing' weren't told in one chapter but instead, spread throughout the book and told when the story was most needed.  Starting chapters with glimpses into what Emma went through allowed for scenes to be set and decisions about her future to be made.

All of the characters in Forgotten were so well developed that there wasn't one person who seemed out of place.  While I wasn't in love with all of them (namely Craig, Emma's boyfriend) others more than made up for it (Stephanie, Emma's BFF).  In fact, the relationship between Emma and Dominic was so well crafted that I found myself cheering for the two of them right from the beginning.

Overall, Forgotten is a brilliant story about something I could never imagine having to deal with.  Catherine McKenzie was able to bring the readers inside of the story and allow them to feel emotions that they wouldn't have felt possible.