When I Was You by Minka Kent

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Mystery, Suspense
Content: Mostly clean, I can't even remember any cursing. 


After barely surviving a brutal attack, Brienne Dougray rarely leaves her house. Suffering from debilitating headaches and memory loss, she can rely only on her compassionate new tenant, Dr. Niall Emberlin, a welcome distraction from the discomfiting bubble that has become her existence.

But Brienne’s growing confidence in her new routine is shaken when she stumbles across unsettling evidence that someone else is living as…her. Same name. Same car. Same hair. Same clothes. She’s even friended her family on social media. To find out why, Brienne must leave the safety of her home to hunt a familiar stranger.

I was in the mood for a good mystery or suspense thriller and this book ended up being a good choice. I'm giving it 4 stars for two reasons; because it kept me glued to it all day and because I found it refreshing that it wasn't full of unsavory characters and expletives. Nowadays it seems rare to find a book like this that doesn't include those. I've had a hard time finding suspense thrillers that even have a main character that I can like.

I would probably give everything else about the book 3 stars. It was easy to figure out what was going on from the beginning, and the author lets you in on it as soon as the point of view switches. I was a little disappointed in that. There were also some holes and implausibilities that bothered me. There were two things in particular that were never explained. One was the facebook page. Why was it created in the first place if Brienne never used social media anyway and who created it? [ I'm assuming Shane created it since Sam didn't know what was going on, but why friend her distant relatives? And how did he know who they were in the first place? And it seemed like Sam was the one posting on it, so it really didn't make sense.  (hide spoiler)] The other was how Niall knew where Brienne was when she was at the office about to face her imposter. No explanation was ever given for that.

I ended up liking the main character even though she was very gullible. I just don't think anyone would have believed the story she was given that easily, but I was able to let it slide a little, considering the trauma she was already dealing with. I also, unexpectedly ended up really liking one of the other characters a lot. [ Sam. I found it refreshing that the "accomplice" was in the dark about things as well, and not in on it.  (hide spoiler)] Overall I enjoyed reading this and that's what really counts for me. I've already looked up other books by this author to read and plan on giving them a try.