Review: Unremembered (Unremembered #1) by Jessica Brody

When Freedom Airlines flight 121 went down over the Pacific Ocean, no one ever expected to find survivors. Which is why the sixteen-year-old girl discovered floating among the wreckage—alive—is making headlines across the globe.

Even more strange is that her body is miraculously unharmed and she has no memories of boarding the plane. She has no memories of her life before the crash. She has no memories period. No one knows how she survived. No one knows why she wasn’t on the passenger manifest. And no one can explain why her DNA and fingerprints can’t be found in a single database in the world.

Crippled by a world she doesn’t know, plagued by abilities she doesn’t understand, and haunted by a looming threat she can’t remember, Seraphina struggles to piece together her forgotten past and discover who she really is. But with every clue only comes more questions. And she’s running out of time to answer them.

Her only hope is a strangely alluring boy who claims to know her from before the crash. Who claims they were in love. But can she really trust him? And will he be able to protect her from the people who have been making her forget?

From popular young adult author Jessica Brody comes a compelling and suspenseful new sci-fi series, set in a world where science knows no boundaries, memories are manipulated, and true love can never be forgotten.~ Goodreads

Review:
This is the hardest book to review because there are big several twists and turns that I don't want to spoil for you.

So here’s my slightly cryptic review lol

Unremembered starts off with a very promising premise. A young teenage girl wakes up as the lone survivor of a plane crash. She has no name, no past, no memories. She's known only as Violet because of the striking color of her eyes.

This was my favorite part of Unremembered as Violet can't relate to anything. She doesn't even know what a TV is. A simple thing like a grilled cheese sandwich is a foreign concept to her. She really is starting from ground zero and I felt just as lost as she did, grasping for clues. I was completely hooked. All kinds of possibilities were going through my head.

Unfortunately the answers, at least some of them anyway, led to several overused (especially recently) tropes. Brody handles a few of them better than most writers but I had a strong sense of deja vu while reading this book. 

Then all of a sudden came yet another awesome twist that pulled me right back in only to leave me so confused that I had to keep re-reading several passages to make sure things were adding up right. I'm still not sure if they did. I have questions that just weren't answered. Not in the - "oh this is the first book and we need to see how it plays out over the series" way either but in a way that left gaping holes in logic for me.

I hate to knock this one because I really liked the fast paced writing style. It's the one thing that kept me going rather than DNF'ing it. I just felt like I never fully connected to the characters. The romance was sweet but very intense without us really getting to know why exactly. The romance became the most important thing to the plot and I didn’t believe in it so it’s hard to feel too attached at that point.

The one thing I outright did not enjoy was the villain. He is definitely a bad guy but he's also the type that talks diabolically…at length…over several pages…about what he's going to do and how we got to this big showdown. I would have rather seen it all in action than be told.

Final thoughts: Cool premise, and if you haven't read several similar stories in a row it would be a fun surprising story. But I did and I think it tarnished how I viewed Unremembered. I’m reluctant at saying exactly what those books were because I don’t want to spoil this book for anyone.

If you are a fan of sic-fi, conspiracies, epic, true love and plot twists give it a shot. Here is the Goodreads review page for the book. The ratings are all over the place so just because it didn't work for me, it doesn't mean it wouldn't work for you.

Author: Website | Twitter | Goodreads
Source: ARC received from Farrar, Straus, & Giroux for my honest review
Buy the book! Unremembered