Remember Me?

vLexi is out for an evening with her mates, in 2004. Running for a taxi, she slips and falls... and wakes up in hospital, in 2007. Or so it seems. She is suffering partial amnesia which means that the events of the previous three years have totally gone from her mind.

To her amazement, Lexi discovers that she's married to a rather gorgeous millionaire, and is now a director in the company she was working for in 2004. She even has a slimmer, bronzed body, perfect teeth and a manicure.

But all is not as great as it seems. Lexi's friends no longer want to know her. Her little sister has turned into a teenage trouble-maker. She's apparently become a strict, controlling unpopular boss. Her husband is very picky about their fabulous home, and show more rather dull. And then there's Jon, who she finds rather disturbing...

I'm always slightly surprised at how much I enjoy Sophia Kinsella's novels. This one is slightly more serious than her others, but no less enjoyable. I read it almost in one sitting - wondering how the author could get Lexi from her casual 25-year-old self into the transformed 28-year-old who is both loved and hated, and whom she simply can't recognise as herself.

It's very cleverly done, gradually unfolding more of the past from different perspectives, building up a surprisingly believable picture.

Four and a half stars, really. show less

Remember Me? is a quirky, fun novel by one of my favorite authors. A quick read (it took me only a few hours to complete), Remember Me? features Lexi Smart, who wakes up one day to find herself twenty-eight years old, working as a director in her company, married to a (seemingly) perfect man, and the possessor of the most fabulous closet she has ever seen. The problem is, Lexi can’t remember the last three years of her life, those three years having been wiped away in a car accident. Lexi frantically tries to regain her memory and figure out who she is; along the way, she learns that she’s turned into a completely different person than she expected to be.

The writing is funny and quirky, and I love how Sophie Kinsella manages time show more and time again to suck the reader into the plot. My only problem with the plot was that the characters seemed to have changed too much in a three-year time span, especially Lexi, who turned out to be a completely different person at twenty-eight than twenty-five. Kinsella has a talent for creating protagonists (like Becky Bloomwood and Sam Sweeting) who are completely average in many ways, but who are nonetheless endearing, and Lexi Smart is one of them. show less

Kudos to Sophie Kinsella for taking a soap-operatic topic like memory loss and turning it into a fully non-cliched book! Not only that, she takes the usually flat genre of chick-lit and brings in a massive dose of suspense, leaving the reader positively on their toes trying to find out what happens next. While many chick-lit books may have interesting plots and plot twists, none of them really brings in an element of mystery, from what I've read so far, at least. It was slightly difficult, although necessary to the plot, to read about the snobbery of life as a high-upper, but again, that was the entire point of the book, to make the reader feel as uncomfortable as Lexi must have been. The ending was great--I'm sure everyone expected, show more particularly by the misleading summary on the book cover, Lexi to regain her memory. Kinsella brings her memory back, but only a flash, and the subject of the tiny flash is what makes it so poignant. The novel would have been destroyed had Kinsella brought her entire memory back, it would nullify the point of the whole book--Lexi finding herself. The most notable aspect of the book to me was the abundance of amazing references that, for once, I actually understood. I think this contained the most amazing HP reference ever, as well as good ones to The West Wing, Coldplay, and 'Bad Day' (it really truly WAS the song everyone was singing back then!)

Rating: 4.5/5 show less

Not one of Kinsella's best, but not her worst, either. I always have mixed feelings about her work; technically, she's writing the same story, with the same characters, over and over again. She just changes the details. And her pacing is always a toss up. Sometimes her books are tight and well-edited, while others are off; this one started off quick, dragged in the middle, and then had an ending that felt both rushed and contrived. So why give it three stars? Because the one gift that Kinsella has is that ability to grab you and make you not want to put the book down, even when you know what's going to happen. It's like she somehow infuses her average quality writing with a dose of crack. And to me, that talent for making a book show more addictive is the greatest talent of all. You can't teach that. That comes naturally. So even though Remember Me is nothing much to shout about, it's a good, fluffy, quick read. show less

http://readersdialogue.blogspot.com/2011/01/remember-me.html
Sophie Kinsella's style is amazing. It's crisp, funny, and sharp - like Lexi. She has a way of describing things so that they jump off the page and are so vivid that they almost become real. There's humor, sure - she's a comedy writer, after all. But there's also emotion and depth, as her characters feel deeply about things, as Lexi struggles to find herself. It's a real story, not just a fun ride.

It's a really great way to ponder choices and paths in life - what would my now-self say to my three-years-from-now-self about my choices? For that matter, what would my three-years-ago-self say to my now-self? The drastic change from nice-girl Lexi to the Cobra, and the way she wakes show more up into the life of the Cobra with the attitudes of nice-girl, showcase what a person could do to himself without realizing it. Sophie Kinsella presents this with a real understanding of what could happen. She seamlessly fits the old Lexi into a high-powered, unfamiliar life, and I love the way everyone's reactions are spot-on to the way they would have known her, whether they are from her old or new life. show less

This was almost 5-stars for me. I love Kinsella's writing style, and how she weaves themes like family responsibility, getting what you want, and can women be both successful and liked as bosses, into her highly entertaining novels.
My gripes were minor. I didn't quite buy into Lexi's (forgotten) transformation from hapless girl-next-door into bitch boss from hell, but I adored how she 'wakes up' to her new life and is so impressed by it, she thinks she's done seriously good deeds in a former life: "I must have been Gandhi"! And, although it's not unusual in a book of this type to guess which guy she'll end up with, a certain style of shoe worn by Mr. Wrong did seem to give the game away incredibly early :)
I would have loved Mr Nasty at show more work to have got his just desserts, and, as a keen runner myself, I was bemused that Lexi's husband, who does the London Marathon every year, never went for a single training run in the whole book.
But really, these points are picky. Lexi is a highly likeable heroine. I truly did enjoy this and strongly recommend it to fans or those new to her work. show less

Kinsella is my péché mignon - she's fun, unpretentious, and wildly entertaining. She actually makes me laugh out loud. I was afraid that this one might be a miss as it seriously reminded me of the movie "Regarding Henry" which came out in 1996 - the plot is definitely not overwhelmingly original. However, the hilarious and outlandish situations got the better of me and I ended up enjoying it just as much. A total stress buster and delightful comedy.