Remember Me?

I picked this up on a rainy Sunday wanting something funny and fast, and a friend said this was the Kinsella she rereads when tired. Sophie Kinsella published it in 2008 with Dial Press, and the hardcover runs 389 pages. The hook grabbed me. A woman wakes in hospital thinking she is twenty five and learns she is twenty eight with a life she does not know. I have had those travel mornings where the room takes a second to place. This book stretches that second into three missing years and asks what you would do with them.

Lexi Smart thinks she is twenty five, with frizzy hair, aching teeth, a junior job, a damp flat, and a sweet broke boyfriend her friends call Loser Dave. She is funny in the unedited way of people new to offices. She bikes and snacks and frets over rent. After a work party she steps outside, falls, and wakes on a hospital floor. A nurse calls her Mrs. Gardiner. Lexi laughs. Then a handsome stranger enters and says he is her husband. That turn made me sit up.

Eric Gardiner is rich and polished and clipped. Her teeth are now perfect. Her hair is sleek. Her bag costs more than her old monthly pay. Her title is one she once joked about. The flat holds art she cannot recall buying. Friends look the same but act changed. Her mother cries and mentions a funeral Lexi cannot find, her father's service, which she attended in body but not in memory. That detail cut deeper than the bag. To learn you buried your father and hold no image of the day is real fear under comedy, and Kinsella lets it sit without a joke.

Waking in the wrong year

Lexi wakes sure it is 2004. She asks for her boyfriend and her cracked phone. Nurses trade looks. A doctor says gently that it is 2007 and a head injury took years. Lexi waits for the prank to end. She checks her arms. No planned tattoo. A manicure she would never buy. A scar with no story. Each small question opens a gap. What happened to the flat. Who feeds the dog. Why does no one laugh.

Kinsella handles the physical comedy without making Lexi look foolish. Lexi sits up and the room tilts. She charms the doctor and gets his name wrong. She smiles at Eric because smiling beats asking if he jokes, then whispers to a nurse to confirm. The nurse says yes with practiced kindness. Eric brings costly flowers and touches her shoulder like a man with years of habit. Lexi freezes. To her a stranger touches her. I felt for both. He lost his wife in another way than she lost herself.

The gaps form the engine. Lexi recalls 2004 intact, her desk and boss and Friday drinks and hopes for a raise. She recalls nothing of 2005 or 2006. No promotion. No move. No vows. She tests edges with small queries. Shoe size now. Still hate olives. Who leads the country. The game turns serious when she asks about her dad and her mum falls silent. Lexi learns of his death and the reading she gave, with no picture in her head. She asks for water and cries alone. I paused there. Handbag jokes are one thing. This is the cost below.

A perfect life she cannot place

Home, Lexi tours a spread she once mocked. Clean lines and thick towels. Suits with sharp shoulders. Shoes that hurt to view. Champagne in the fridge and little food. A cleaner schedule. A car number in her phone. At work she runs a department, briefs clients, signs budgets that once scared her. Staff call her Lexi or Mrs. Gardiner based on fear. Her assistant watches as if she might burst.

I enjoyed Lexi faking command while panicking. Day one back, she nods through forecasts, notes unknown words, smiles at pauses. Then she hides in the bathroom and rings an old friend for translation. What is a forward buy. Who hates whom. Why does all mail copy Eric. Her old self read people well and played politics badly. People say her new self does numbers and hard edges. Lexi tries the edges like a coat that pinches. She snaps, feels sick, over apologizes. One older colleague says she was warmer before the fall. Lexi cannot tell if that praises or warns.

The marriage looks right outside and odd inside. Eric is attentive in public and corrects her wine in private. He recalls her tea and buys gifts she supposedly chose. He tells smooth stories of their meeting. At home he works late and takes calls at dinner. Lexi seeks photos of laughter and finds poses. She seeks messy cards and finds typed notes. She asks what they fight about. He says they rarely fight. That worries her more than a row would. Couples I know row over dishwashers. A pair with no rows sounds like a show flat.

Money runs through it. At twenty five Lexi counted bus coins. At twenty eight she signs without glancing. A trainer dreaded. A facialist with fees. Old friends keep awe plus distance. Lexi nods and thinks of Dave's lopsided sofa where ease lived.

Friends, Dave, and Eric's circle

The friends show Kinsella at her sharpest and broadest. One old friend turned sleek and cool, quick to cite promotion. Another stays warm but careful, as if new Lexi once punished softness. At work a rival with bright hair claims concern while mining facts. A loyal junior lights up when old Lexi shows. Kinsella sketches fast with one or two strokes. It often amuses. At times they read as types, the snob and the climber. I laughed and I noticed.

Loser Dave is the ache. In 2004 he fixed her bike and danced badly and loved her plainly. In 2007 he left her phone. No one names him at dinner. When Lexi finds him, he stays wary. He has pieced a fresh start and will not serve as her memory project. Their scenes rank best because banter drops and awkwardness stays. Lexi wants to explain. Dave wants no scene. She recalls a chip joke. He recalls being left. They recall the leaving differently, which is how it usually goes.

Eric's circle presses in. Partners and school friends treat her loss as a fault to manage. Take pills. Rest. Skip the office. Smile at dinner. Lexi, never good at stillness, feels watched at home. Eric says he loves her, and she thinks he means it, but his love aims at 2007 Lexi, the hostess and closer, not the puzzled woman asking why they own two dish sets for guests she dislikes. When she asks what they laugh at together, he looks blank, as if laughter missed the contract. There is a dinner where Lexi botches names and drinks fast from nerves. Eric steadies her with a practiced hand. In the car he stays quiet in a stored anger way.

Jon and the cracked marriage

Jon Drakes is an architect on the vast house Eric and Lexi supposedly wanted. He is blunt and scruffy and cold to money talk. He expects the dragon staff warned of and meets a woman in borrowed boots who admits she never chose the stone. He stares. Then he shifts the book. You meant to leave Eric. You told me. You had a plan.

Lexi first reads this as a line. Yet details accrue. Texts she never recalls sending. A meeting set and dropped. A small flat viewed in secret. Friends who heard her say she felt caged at smiling parties. Jon says the pre fall Lexi saw cracks and sought his help to exit. No grand affair, but a friendship grown honest. He liked her enough to tell truth when she could not hold it. That candor risks his job. Eric warns him off. Jon keeps talking, which marks him.

Their scenes supply warmth. Jon shows Lexi buildings he loves, not grand ones but clever ones, a space saving stair and a window set for morning. He speaks of materials as if they matter. Lexi, who sells floor space, listens harder than in boardrooms. He teases her sleek hair. She teases his van and napkin sketches. Slowly flashes come, not full scenes but feelings. Kinsella wisely leaves open whether these are memory or wish.

Cracks widen in small rooms, not big rows. Lexi finds her own strange note. She finds a circled brochure for a modest flat. She hears Eric call her fragile on the phone, as if fragility were a phase. She asks plain questions. Did I want this house. Did I seek those boards. Did I ask for what you refused. Eric answers smoothly, and smooth starts to sound like dodge. He says she was glad. He says the fall muddled her. He says Jon uses her. Some may hold. Care can mimic control when fear runs high. But 2004 Lexi asked until she got true answers, and that habit wakes. She keeps a notebook. Dates. Claims. Patterns show.

I will grant Jon comes idealized, patient and funny and handy and principled, more common in novels than vans. Eric gets few soft beats, which tilts things. Kinsella grants him one late chapter where strain and love break through, and I valued it, but scales stay tipped. That suits romantic comedy. The draw is less who she picks than how she finds nerve to pick after losing years.

Piecing three years

The middle turns detective, with Lexi as sleuth and suspect. With Jon plus her mum and two loyal friends, she rebuilds 2005 to 2007. A lucky deal brings promotion. A boss says image counts and pushes a makeover. Costly dental work yields the perfect teeth worth more than her old car. Longer hours. Fewer buses. Meeting Eric at an event where she charmed him without trying, or so lore says. Fast courtship. Cake she cannot taste in photos.

Kinsella paces reveals so each answer breeds a question. Why did Sunday calls to mum fade. Why did Dave exit photos. Why did spending jump before pay did. Lexi reads old mails in her voice but sharper, copying bosses and declining invites with gloss. She meets them with horror plus recognition. Ambition shaped that. Fear shaped that. London then prized polish and punished softness, and Lexi bent. The game paid in flat and title and a photogenic husband. It thinned friends and tired her in ways she can now view from outside. Forgetting lets her audit without flinching, a clever use of the trick even if the medicine needs forgiveness.

Her mother anchors this stretch. Mum is blunt and funny and mourns her husband while aiding a daughter who forgot his death. In her kitchen tea cools while Lexi asks again what Dad said last and what song played. Mum answers and answers again. She never scolds. She says grief is no test to pass. She also says Eric was kind at the funeral and paid without fuss, and that she feared how fast Lexi changed after wedding. Those talks steadied me when office farce spun.

Work serves as second court. Lexi must lead a deal she scarcely grasps while rivals wait. She asks dumb questions in smart forms, hears juniors who know files, admits in session she needs a recap post injury. Some respect candor. Others scent blood. A talk goes wrong with a false slide and name. Lexi saves it by telling a true client story instead of reading points, and the room wakes. Old people skills rescue new career for a day. Yet one good meeting cannot cure a fear based culture she helped feed. She apologizes to someone she once shamed and means it. It starts repair, which is all apology can do.

Funny, forced, still sweet

Does the close earn out. Mostly yes, with stated caveats. The amnesia setup strains. Real doctors would set more limits and fewer solo London treks. A blow that neatly erases three years while sparing wit is handy. Kinsella knows and keeps tone light so you do not press. If you press, it wobbles. I mostly declined to press because pages move and Lexi's voice carries. She stays self aware sans bitterness, funny sans cruelty, and her muddle feels human when the science does not.

The side cast runs broad. Work rival and sleek friends and Eric's cool mother, even Jon in his fine van, get punchlines more than inner lives. Across 389 pages that thinness shows, most in a late party of wrong names and spilled drinks that delays a needed talk between Lexi and Eric. When the talk arrives it proves direct and sad, and I wanted more room. Eric says he built what she asked. Lexi says she asked then outgrew without knowing. Both can stand. Kinsella holds them a page before plot parts the pair.

What lifts it is Lexi reclaiming choice. She stops asking who she was and asks who she wants to be with facts in hand. She keeps 2007 parts that serve, nerve in sessions and clean bounds, and sheds parts that choke, endless performing and the charity smile and the marriage that photographs well and feels hollow. She eats crisps. She rings mum without clock checks. She tells truth at work at cost. She views Jon not as rescue but as a man who liked her doubting. She views Eric not as villain but as a man who loved a version she distrusts. The pick concerns habits more than men.

I closed fond of Lexi beyond early expectation. First chapters invite laughs at her. Later ones invite standing by her through hard tasks with sore head and full notebook. No tidy moral waits. Kinsella never claims memory makes good or forgetting clears debts. Lexi still owes sorry calls. She still faces a boss who wants the old shark. She still must tell Eric things that wound. Charm is she does it with jokes that land and feeling that holds. For comedy on lost years, it leaves you weighing weeks. I laughed on the bus, then rang my mum. That seems the right reply.

Forgetting gave her a strange gift, a chance to interview her own life and decide what to keep.