Remember Me
By Charity Norman

Remember Me is another gripping thriller from Charity Norman. It gives me great pleasure to close the blog tour with a review today, thanks to Random Things Tours and publisher – Allen and Unwin for inviting me and for a copy of the book. Discover more in the blurb and my review, as well as a little about this author.

Blurb

They never found Leah Parata. Not a boot, not a backpack, not a turquoise beanie. After she left me that day, she vanished off the face of the earth. A close-knit community is ripped apart by disturbing revelations that cast new light on a young woman’s disappearance twenty-five years ago.

After years of living overseas, Emily returns to New Zealand to care for her father who has dementia. As his memory fades and his guard slips, she begins to understand him for the first time – and to glimpse shattering truths about his past.

Are some secrets best left buried?

Another page-turning, emotive suspense novel from the Richard & Judy bestselling author of After the Fall and Radio 2 Book Club pick, 2020’s The Secrets of Strangers – ideal reading-group fiction, perfect for fans of Jodi Picoult and Clare Mackintosh.

Review

After really liking Secrets of Strangers, I was delighted to be given the opportunity to review Remember Me. When reviewing Secrets of Strangers, I reckoned this was an author to watch. I wasn’t wrong. Remember Me is absolutely just as gripping and addictive to read as the layers build up to discover what happened to Leah when she mysteriously disappeared.

Emily Kirkland is a children’s illustrator in the UK, who then makes the sort of difficult decision to upsticks and leave what and where she loves, to go and care for her ailing father, Felix, who was perhaps not one of the better paternal figures there’s ever been, to care for him in his advancing years. She does have 2 siblings, Eddie and Carmen, who don’t want make any changes in their lives and reckons he should just go into a carehome so they can continue their lives with no disruption, which in a way forces Emily’s hand to go cross half the world to do something. It also turns into a journey that was more than she expected as she discovers more about him, what makes him tick and what secrets he has been concealing for so long, that have huge consequences.

The secrets that emerge that keep those pages turning as it goes between 2019 with the investigation and people in the village in their current states and 1994 when they were all shaken up with Leah Parata going missing. As time moves on, characters have aged and as well as getting to know the scenery and the inner community, the characters have also naturally aged and all are not well. Alzheimers features and is written well by Norman. She has clearly either put in the research or had experience of someone with this disease, creating an additional heart-rendering element that so many people will sadly be able to relate to, as well as someone being missing for so many years, without trace, also I am sure, relatable to those with family and those who perhaps have experienced this.

Close-knit communities is what Charity Norman seems to do well and writes with aplomb. In Remember Me, you really get to know the people in the community and the inner, anguished secrets that have been kept, creating intensity.

This is a book I highly recommend.

About The Author

Charity Norman was born in Uganda and brought up in successive draughty vicarages in Yorkshire and Birmingham. After several years’ travel she became a barrister, specialising in crime and family law. In 2002, realising that her three children had barely met her, she took a break from the law and moved with her family to New Zealand. REMEMBER ME is her seventh novel.