All is Not Forgotten - A Review

ALL IS NOT FORGOTTEN by Wendy Walker

If one of the worst things imaginable happened to your daughter and you had something within your grasp to make the memories of it go away, wouldn’t you use it?

In the affluent town of Fairview Connecticut the rape of Jenny Kramer was shocking.  Things like that just did not happen there and things like that absolutely did not happen to the Kramer family.  Benefit dinners, fundraisers and country club luncheons are the things that happen to the Kramers. When their daughter was raped they really didn’t know how to cope.  Then the doctors offered them an experimental “magic pill” which erases memories, tested on veterans suffering from PTSD.  Jenny’s mother Charlotte jumped at the chance to pretend the rape had never happened.  Her father, Tom, was not so sure it was the right thing to do.  The drug was administered but the magic in the pill was not quite complete … yes Jenny’s memory of that night was erased, but everyone else knew about it and Jenny felt different.

Jenny starts visiting a psychiatrist – who happens to have his own agenda, the police investigation carries on – but of course now Jenny can’t help, the Kramer’s marriage starts to show cracks that they had previously hidden and, what happens when the rapist is apprehended?

Most of this book is written in the first person, almost as journal entries, by whom we discover about a third of the way in, is Jenny’s psychiatrist.  Not long after we discover the narrator’s identity we also learn that he is a most unreliable source because he has an agenda of his own … less traumatic but almost as shocking as Jenny’s rape.  This made the book uncomfortable to read.  Not so uncomfortable that I wanted to stop because by that point I was so involved in the lives of the (very well developed) characters I HAD TO KNOW what would happen at then end.  Ms. Walker did an admirable job bringing this difficult story to a satisfactory, if not necessarily a happy, conclusion. 

As much as I enjoyed (can one enjoy a book that centers around the rape of a 16-year old girl?) my 4-star rating stems from feeling that the flow of the book was interrupted too frequently by multiple retellings of the same story line.  And, while I could understand the friendship Jenny developed with a young, troubled soldier who had also received the same drug for his PTSD, I felt it was almost a different book during those parts.

Overall, despite the difficult subject matter, it was a worthwhile read for the unusual take Ms. Walker brought to it in this book.

I’d like to thank St. Martin’s Press and Netgalley for providing my with this book 

in the hopes I would provide an honest review.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR (from www.wendywalkerbooks.com)

Wendy Walker is a family law attorney in Fairfield County, Connecticut who began writing while at home raising her three sons. She published two novels with St. Martin’s Press and edited multiple compilations for the Chicken Soup for the Soul series before writing her debut psychological thriller, All is Not Forgotten.

Wendy earned her J. D., magna cum laude, at the Georgetown University Law Center where she was awarded  the American Jurisprudence award for her performance in Contracts and Advanced Criminal Procedure.  She received her undergraduate degree, magna cum laude, from Brown University and attended The London School of Economics and Political Science as part of her undergraduate studies.

Prior to her legal career, Wendy was a financial analyst at Goldman, Sachs & Co., in the mergers and acquisitions group. She has also volunteered at the ACLU, Connecticut Legal Services and Figure Skating in Harlem where she served on the Board of Directors for over twelve years.

Wendy is currently writing her second thriller while managing a busy household.

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