The Memory Watcher by Minka Kent

  

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Mystery, Suspense, Psychological Thriller
Content: Strong Language including several F bombs, Moderately descriptive sex scenes, Sexual innuendo and crude language, Drug use

 

When Autumn Carpenter stumbles upon the social media account of the family who adopted her infant daughter years ago, she finds herself instantly drawn into their picture-perfect existence. 
 
From behind a computer screen, Autumn watches Grace's every memory, from birthdays to holidays to bedtime snuggles. But what starts as an innocent fascination spirals into an addictive obsession met with a screeching halt the day the McMullen family closes their Instaface account without so much as a warning. 
 
Frantic and desperate to reconnect with her daughter, Autumn applies for a nanny position with the McMullens, manipulating herself into Grace's life under false pretenses. And it's only then that Autumn discovers pictures lie, the perfect family doesn't exist, and beautiful people? They have the ugliest secrets.

 

A couple of years ago I read The Watcher Girl by Minka Kent and enjoyed it. Then I found out that it was sort of a sequel to this book, The Memory Watcher. Even though both books are standalone stories, I wished I had known that so that I could have read them in the right order. Now, two years later I've finally gotten around to reading this after it was chosen as my "pick it for me" book for November. 

This book was very engrossing and I had so much empathy for Grace as a child. I just wanted to give her a hug. I also wanted to slap some sense into the adults in her life. This book isn't really about Grace so much as the adults around her, but her character really stood out to me, partly because she's the main character in The Watcher Girl as an adult. I had forgotten a lot of what happened in The Watcher Girl so, because of that there was a twist that I wasn't expecting in this book. I was glad that I had forgotten so much because it enhanced my reading experience of this book.

I found the main character in this book very interesting, even though from the beginning we know she has an unhealthy obsession and that she's off mentally, I also felt sorry for her at times. One thing I really liked about this book were the layered characters. No one is what they seem, they have good and bad sides to them, and I found most of them both sympathetic and deplorable at the same time. I thought the author did a good job of showing how the people in the story had different perspectives on what was happening, and how that wasn't necessarily the whole story. I do want to add that this book had a lot more sex in it than the other books I've read by this author. I don't really remember any at all in her other books, but it wasn't really done in a sexy way, it was uncomfortable and at times seedy.

After I finished this book I decided to go back and read The Watcher Girl again because I had forgotten so much about it. When I read it the first time I didn't find Grace all that likable, but on my second read I felt like I understood her and liked her a lot more. 

On a side note, I really liked the author's forward that she included in this book about how she came to write this story in the first place.