2017 Reading Challenge: A Book in the Backlist of a New Favourite Author

This month I cheated a wee bit on my Year of Fun Reading Challenge. I was supposed to read a book in the backlist of a new favourite author. However, I decided instead to read the newest book of a new favourite author.

Last year I reviewed the book Westlake Soul, by Canadian writer Rio Youers, which quickly became the book I’ve told more people to read over the past year than any other.  I absolutely loved both the book and Youers’ writing style. So as per this month’s challenge  I thought I might read one of the books in his backlist, but I quickly discovered that up to the point where he wrote Westlake Soul, his books were definitely veering into (or firmly planted in) the horror genre.

While I have been known to read a smattering of horror books or, more likely, short stories, I find that I just can’t bring myself to read them at this stage in my life. My husband is often gone for work, and I rattle around in my empty nest quite a bit. And once night falls, it gets creepy when you are by yourself! *

However,  I have been eagerly awaiting Youers’ newest release, The Forgotten Girl (St. Martin’s Press, 2017) which is billed as a supernatural thriller. That, I can do. So it was with a great deal of anticipation that I settled down to read it.

The Forgotten Girl opens with the main character, a twenty-six year-old dread-lock sporting, vegetarian, peace-loving street musician named Harvey Anderson, getting kidnapped and beat up by some unknown assailants. Harvey has no idea why they have taken him or why he is being subjected to this brutal beating. It’s quickly apparent that Harvey has been followed for some time, and that the thugs know all about him, and all about his dad, who came home from the Vietnam War wounded in both mind and body, and all about his girlfriend, Sally Starling, who recently has left Harvey.

The problem is, Harvey has no memory of Sally at all, even though they show him proof that he has been living with her for the past five years. They tell him that she has erased all memories of herself from his mind.  He soon realizes that she is the prize they are seeking. They were on Sally’s trail, and the trail led to him, and they want him to lead them to her.

But Harvey cannot. Only a vague flicker of a memory resurrects: a dancing girl, but with no features or any indication of where she was then or where she might be now. This is unfortunate for Harvey, for the next step in the interrogation is the creepy villain of the book who has set the thugs on Sally’s trail, whom Harvey calls “the spider”: Dominic Lang. Lang is a powerful psychic who crawls into Harvey’s mind and searches through it for any trace of the girl both he and Harvey once knew; a horrific violation that leaves Harvey shattered.

And angry. The thugs and the spider leave Harvey with the message that they will be watching and following him, waiting for him to lead him to Sally. But in the resurrection of that one tiny memory (which he begins to think that Sally left him deliberately, as a beacon to lead him to her), something else has been resurrected. Love.

The anger stirred me. Riled me. It also exposed the indefinite emotion inside–the one I’d been afraid of admitting to. And it was love. Of course it was. I loved a girl I couldn’t remember, and that made total sense to me. Because love is quite apart from memory. It runs deeper, like a hole in space that exists even after the star has exploded. 

As Harvey begins his journey to the girl he has forgotten, he gets deeper and deeper into a conspiracy that not even his paranoid father could make up, reaching to the top levels of government. The book races along a fast clip, always keeping you interested, but with Youers’ lyrical prose giving you moments of contemplation about the nature of love, memory, and loss.

The characterizations in this novel are complex ones, and the relationships that Harvey discovers with both his damaged father and his “forgotten girl” are rich and true to life. And in the terrible circumstances he finds himself in, Harvey has to confront his worst demons, overcome the weaknesses he finds in himself, and discover strengths he didn’t know he had.

I particularly liked the way his relationship with his dad grew and changed in the book. Youers’ ability to portray family ties in interesting and realistic ways, so evident in Westlake Soul, shines in this novel as well. The only drawback is that I wish we could have seen more of Harvey and his dad together.

Both The Forgotten Girl and Westlake Soul touch on themes of memory, love, and courage. Both are about who you become when everything is taken away from you, and the roles of both our minds and emotions in our relationships with the ones we love. Westlake Soul sits a little higher on the shelf in my mind, but that is not to say that The Forgotten Girl is not worthy of much praise.

Bottom line, this book is about a man who loves a woman and loses her, and the depths that he will go to get her back, even if all he has left of her is a wisp of a memory. And that’s a story I can heartily approve of!

I really enjoyed it and look forward to what Rio Youers will do next.

My rating: 5 stars for excellent writing, a thrilling and interesting plot, and well-drawn characters.

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*Ok, technically, I am not completely alone. I have my wonderful Labrador RetrieverX, but although he is good company I’m not entirely sure how useful he will be if the zombies come a-callin’. He’s a lover more than a fighter, if you know what I mean….