Genre Fiction
![Alexandra Oliva - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B01GF0BPQG.jpg)
Forget Me Not: A Novel
She was born for all the wrong reasons. But her search for the truth reveals answers she wishes she could bury in Forget Me Not, a suspenseful and deeply moving near-future thriller from the author of The Last One.
"A page-turning mystery . . . highly original, sharply insightful, and thoroughly riveting."-Kimberly McCreight, New York Times bestselling author of A Good Marriage
What if your past wasn't what you thought?
As a child, Linda Russell was left to raise herself in a twenty-acre walled-off property in rural Washington. The woods were her home, and for twelve years she lived oblivious to a stark and terrible truth: Her mother had birthed her only to replace another daughter who died in a tragic accident years before.
Then one day Linda witnesses something she wasn't meant to see. Terrified and alone, she climbs the wall and abandons her home, but her escape becomes a different kind of trap when she is thrust into the modern world-a world for which she is not only entirely unprepared, but which is unprepared to accept her.
And you couldn't see a future for yourself?
Years later, Linda is living in bustling Seattle, but she has never felt more alone. With social media more ubiquitous than ever before, she is hounded by the society she is now forced to inhabit. When Linda meets a fascinating new neighbor who might just be a potential friend, and who shows her the possibility of a new escape through virtual reality, she begins to allow herself to hope for more by being sucked into a world that feels safe, but isn't real.
What would it take to reclaim your life?
Then an unexplained fire at her infamous childhood home jolts Linda back to reality. She must return to the property for the first time since she was a girl, unleashing a chain of events that will not only endanger her life but challenge her understanding of family, memory, and the world itself.
"A page-turning mystery . . . highly original, sharply insightful, and thoroughly riveting."-Kimberly McCreight, New York Times bestselling author of A Good Marriage
What if your past wasn't what you thought?
As a child, Linda Russell was left to raise herself in a twenty-acre walled-off property in rural Washington. The woods were her home, and for twelve years she lived oblivious to a stark and terrible truth: Her mother had birthed her only to replace another daughter who died in a tragic accident years before.
Then one day Linda witnesses something she wasn't meant to see. Terrified and alone, she climbs the wall and abandons her home, but her escape becomes a different kind of trap when she is thrust into the modern world-a world for which she is not only entirely unprepared, but which is unprepared to accept her.
And you couldn't see a future for yourself?
Years later, Linda is living in bustling Seattle, but she has never felt more alone. With social media more ubiquitous than ever before, she is hounded by the society she is now forced to inhabit. When Linda meets a fascinating new neighbor who might just be a potential friend, and who shows her the possibility of a new escape through virtual reality, she begins to allow herself to hope for more by being sucked into a world that feels safe, but isn't real.
What would it take to reclaim your life?
Then an unexplained fire at her infamous childhood home jolts Linda back to reality. She must return to the property for the first time since she was a girl, unleashing a chain of events that will not only endanger her life but challenge her understanding of family, memory, and the world itself.
Editorial Reviews
"Alexandra Oliva pulls off a stunning feat in Forget Me Not, effortlessly toeing the line between humanity and technology, virtual reality and the physical world. Her novel overflows with heartbreak, loneliness, terror, and compassion but never once sacrifices the propulsion of story. She presents the reader with a difficult choice-linger over the finely crafted prose or tear straight through to the stunning conclusion. Either way, you can't go wrong."-Ivy Pochoda, author of These Women
"Forget Me Not is a beautifully written exploration of the gaps between realities. How real is your past if you can't remember it? How real is your present if it's mostly lived online? How real is your future if no one you know is trustworthy, including yourself?"-Laurie Frankel, New York Times bestselling author of This Is How It Always Is
"Part domestic drama, part page-turning mystery, Forget Me Not is a highly original, sharply insightful and thoroughly riveting exploration of what it means to be a family in a morally complex, technologically modern world."-Kimberly McCreight, New York Times bestselling author of Reconstructing Amelia and A Good Marriage
"Captivating characters carry this absorbing cautionary tale. . . . [A] riveting, moving masterpiece of both character and plot."-Shelf Awareness
"Harrowing . . . Oliva is a writer to watch."-Publishers Weekly
"Forget Me Not is a beautifully written exploration of the gaps between realities. How real is your past if you can't remember it? How real is your present if it's mostly lived online? How real is your future if no one you know is trustworthy, including yourself?"-Laurie Frankel, New York Times bestselling author of This Is How It Always Is
"Part domestic drama, part page-turning mystery, Forget Me Not is a highly original, sharply insightful and thoroughly riveting exploration of what it means to be a family in a morally complex, technologically modern world."-Kimberly McCreight, New York Times bestselling author of Reconstructing Amelia and A Good Marriage
"Captivating characters carry this absorbing cautionary tale. . . . [A] riveting, moving masterpiece of both character and plot."-Shelf Awareness
"Harrowing . . . Oliva is a writer to watch."-Publishers Weekly
Readers Top Reviews
Kathy F.
Forget Me Not is a dark and unusual mystery/thriller set in the near future. Linda spent the first 12 years of her life in an isolated, walled off 20-acre wilderness in Washington state. She lived there with her mother, Lorelei, and her twin sister, Emmer. Her mother had little use or love for the girls and left them to see to their own needs. Together they would romp and play through the forests, lost in their games of make-believe. One day, her mother took Emmer away, and upon returning, told Linda her sister would not be coming back. Life continued on, but now filled with loneliness. What love she had found in her twin, couldn't be replaced. Certainly, her mother wasn't willing or able to try! One night, Linda witnessed something so disturbing that she climbed one of the forbidden walls and entered the outside world in total, fear of both what she was running from and the unknown world she now found herself in. We first meet Linda as she is entering her apartment building in Seattle. She is a bit older, but still trying to make sense of this very strange and large world. Socially interacting with anyone was a nightmare of misunderstandings for her. People seemed to have conventions about such things, but she didn't know what they were or what the people expected of her. It was all she could do to navigate through the interactions needed to gather supplies etc. Oliva skillfully develops her characters and their relationships; they are both interesting and believable. I loved watching Linda develop and grow as she gets more used to her new world and even begins to develop some relationships. That alone would be a fascinating story! Readers learn that Linda is a publicly known person (or at least her story is very well-known) and when Linda learns of it, she is devastated. Her whole previous life as she knew it was built on a lie, and she is set adrift again. When people make the connection between Linda and the story, it is only through the kindness of one of her new friends that she escapes the clamor of those wanting to talk to her about it. I didn't care for the turns into the worlds of gaming and alternative realities. This is where the book soured for me personally. Still, I have enjoyed Ms. Oliva's other works and look forward to doing so again. This just wasn't it for me. My gratitude to NetGalley and Ballantine for allowing me to read an advance copy of this novel which is scheduled to be published on 3/2/21. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own.
Margaret F.Kathy
Originally posted on Tales to Tide You Over This is a hard story to classify. It has elements from thrillers, cold case examinations, relationships, and the effect of technology on society to name a few. Despite this, it’s easy to read. Whether Linda’s struggling to integrate with a society she doesn’t understand or Anvi’s on the hunt for some new tidbit not to share but just to explore, these elements are a natural extension of the story. The two main characters each offer a different perspective of the near future world they live in. Linda's life story went viral when it came out her mother had raised Linda in secret to replicate a sister who died. Twelve years later, she’s had little success finding a place in the modern world. Linda longs to return to her feral upbringing rather than navigate the complexities of social interaction. Anvi might be the more “normal” voice, but she’s also the view of social media. She is an extrovert who doesn’t shy away from strangers, and who asks potentially uncomfortable questions and ponders the problematic issues with social media. Anvi sees the need for a responsible voice at the heart of it. She’s driven by her studies of disinformation spread during the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the pandemic, only one example of contemporary events' influence. Her perspectives on privacy, the Internet, and what needs to change offers a window into the story Linda can never be. The development of their friendship is beautiful. Each step forward Linda makes pairs with a threat, whether provoked by Anvi or external to their growing bond. Linda’s is a journey of discovery and trust, neither aspect a well-developed part of her character. Anvi must cross the treacherous ground others have filled with traps when they attempted to use Linda for their own benefit. Whether it’s the debate about us being characters in a virtual reality simulation or how pre-knowledge influences how you interact, there are strong psychological and philosophical elements, and not just for Linda and Anvi. We learn about the people surrounding both women, now and years before, when those relationships influence the story present. Only Nibbler, Anvi's dog, stands out as straightforward, and even that relationship goes through a few twists and turns. The threat of a media storm is also tangible, expanding the story out to touch many lives. The book is complex and complicated in a fascinating way. Systematic bias, primarily race and economic, plays an underlying role in part because Linda’s mother held her separate from society during her developmental years. She may not be affected by subconscious bias, but neither can she recognize when her actions play into them. The events between when she emerged and the story starts demonstrate the gap between classes. Her wealth, and her father’s, shelters her fr...
Lynn DeWaltMargar
Ali has mastered weaving past and present to keep the reader turning the pages to see what happens next. She creates characters we can identify with and care about. She blends contemporary themes with a not-so-distant future that is believable. Brava!
Short Excerpt Teaser
1.
A woman whose name shouldn't be Linda stands inside the locked front door of her apartment, listening. Footsteps: a neighbor, walking. Linda knows her neighbors only from names on lobby mailboxes and glances through the peephole, doesn't care to meet them, can't chance being known. She gives the footsteps enough time to reach the elevator. To press the button, step in, and begin their descent. Then she unlocks the door, exhales the breath she was hiding from the passerby, and steps out onto the hallway's checkered carpet.
The carpet doesn't look any different from yesterday, and Linda wonders if it'd feel different beneath her toes if she was barefoot. She was trapped yesterday afternoon, waiting for a vacuum to be turned off and taken to another floor. By the time it was gone, her excursion window had passed: School was out, the evening rush about to begin. And though it's in some ways easier to slip away into a crowd, it makes her skin crawl: the talking, the laughter, the heavy-heeled steps. All these people who don't care who overhears the intimate details of their lives as they blather into their earcuffs. Even when they aren't talking, they're tapping and typing, creating hashtags for their confessions and trying to make them trend.
Linda doesn't understand how anyone can seek out the public eye. Yet every day her social feed bleeds the secrets of strangers, willingly shared.
She locks her door, then walks toward the stairwell. She wants to sprint, but that would send the message she's worth looking at. Pushing through the door, she feels a little better. This high up, the stairs are nearly always deserted. Sometimes children dash short distances to visit a friend above or below, but they're loud, echoing creatures-easily avoided-and those old enough to roam are now at school. The stairwell rings only with Linda's footsteps. Still, she pauses to listen at each landing. The casual hello to a stranger, eye contact-she can do it, but it drains her. She can never shake the fear that the person will recognize her, the fear of what they might say or do. She thinks of the woman last summer. The disgust in her eyes as she hissed, What did you do with the bones, freak? The glob of spit that hit Linda's window as a hired driver whisked her out of that neighborhood for the last time.
Linda exits the stairwell. The lobby attendant is sitting at his desk, a blue leopard-print earcuff screaming from his pale ear. Nick. Linda sometimes gets the two white attendants confused, but the earcuff is a dead giveaway. Nick doesn't look at her, and he isn't talking into his earcuff, isn't singing or bobbing his head along to some starlet's vocal fry. He's probably listening to one of the self-help podcasts that are popular. Tips in Attention Splitting is the one Linda keeps seeing mentioned on SocialHub: TAS Tips for Maximum Efficiency, or TASTMEs. Layers of acronyms; Linda likes to make up her own meanings. She hurries past the attendant, thinking: Totally Anonymous Shitheads Tell Man Everything.
She didn't want a doorman building. She didn't want to be in the city at all, had asked for a small house in the mountains, where it would be just her and the trees, maybe even the occasional fox. But Arthur insisted: It's for the best. That's what Dr. Tambor used to say and what Arthur still says. They'd been born to this world, so they should know.
Just as Linda is about to push her way through the lobby's revolving door, a woman buckling beneath the weight of a plastic crate backs into the door from outside. Linda steps aside. The woman with the box is shorter than she is, looks to also be in her mid-twenties, and her skin is dark enough that it's clear she's not Caucasian, though Linda can't identify her ethnicity. She often can't distinguish ethnicities. Dr. Tambor told her this made sense, given her isolated background; she compared it to Linda's inability to distinguish among commonwealth accents-a matter of exposure, no more. But interacting with darker-skinned strangers always sends a special nervousness spiking through her. She worries they can sense this wrongness of hers: an ignorance and curiosity she's learned to never admit to aloud.
And Linda is curious about the incoming woman. She's striking. Her black hair is short and spiky, save for a violet-dyed swath that falls across one temple, and even burdened with the box she moves with a grace and confidence Linda covets. When the woman emerges into the lobby, it's as a conqueror. Her eyes catch Linda's and she chirps, "Afternoon." Her irises are the color and pattern of crystallized honey. Linda shifts her gaze to the floor.
As the attendant scurries to help the newcomer, Linda pushes out ...
A woman whose name shouldn't be Linda stands inside the locked front door of her apartment, listening. Footsteps: a neighbor, walking. Linda knows her neighbors only from names on lobby mailboxes and glances through the peephole, doesn't care to meet them, can't chance being known. She gives the footsteps enough time to reach the elevator. To press the button, step in, and begin their descent. Then she unlocks the door, exhales the breath she was hiding from the passerby, and steps out onto the hallway's checkered carpet.
The carpet doesn't look any different from yesterday, and Linda wonders if it'd feel different beneath her toes if she was barefoot. She was trapped yesterday afternoon, waiting for a vacuum to be turned off and taken to another floor. By the time it was gone, her excursion window had passed: School was out, the evening rush about to begin. And though it's in some ways easier to slip away into a crowd, it makes her skin crawl: the talking, the laughter, the heavy-heeled steps. All these people who don't care who overhears the intimate details of their lives as they blather into their earcuffs. Even when they aren't talking, they're tapping and typing, creating hashtags for their confessions and trying to make them trend.
Linda doesn't understand how anyone can seek out the public eye. Yet every day her social feed bleeds the secrets of strangers, willingly shared.
She locks her door, then walks toward the stairwell. She wants to sprint, but that would send the message she's worth looking at. Pushing through the door, she feels a little better. This high up, the stairs are nearly always deserted. Sometimes children dash short distances to visit a friend above or below, but they're loud, echoing creatures-easily avoided-and those old enough to roam are now at school. The stairwell rings only with Linda's footsteps. Still, she pauses to listen at each landing. The casual hello to a stranger, eye contact-she can do it, but it drains her. She can never shake the fear that the person will recognize her, the fear of what they might say or do. She thinks of the woman last summer. The disgust in her eyes as she hissed, What did you do with the bones, freak? The glob of spit that hit Linda's window as a hired driver whisked her out of that neighborhood for the last time.
Linda exits the stairwell. The lobby attendant is sitting at his desk, a blue leopard-print earcuff screaming from his pale ear. Nick. Linda sometimes gets the two white attendants confused, but the earcuff is a dead giveaway. Nick doesn't look at her, and he isn't talking into his earcuff, isn't singing or bobbing his head along to some starlet's vocal fry. He's probably listening to one of the self-help podcasts that are popular. Tips in Attention Splitting is the one Linda keeps seeing mentioned on SocialHub: TAS Tips for Maximum Efficiency, or TASTMEs. Layers of acronyms; Linda likes to make up her own meanings. She hurries past the attendant, thinking: Totally Anonymous Shitheads Tell Man Everything.
She didn't want a doorman building. She didn't want to be in the city at all, had asked for a small house in the mountains, where it would be just her and the trees, maybe even the occasional fox. But Arthur insisted: It's for the best. That's what Dr. Tambor used to say and what Arthur still says. They'd been born to this world, so they should know.
Just as Linda is about to push her way through the lobby's revolving door, a woman buckling beneath the weight of a plastic crate backs into the door from outside. Linda steps aside. The woman with the box is shorter than she is, looks to also be in her mid-twenties, and her skin is dark enough that it's clear she's not Caucasian, though Linda can't identify her ethnicity. She often can't distinguish ethnicities. Dr. Tambor told her this made sense, given her isolated background; she compared it to Linda's inability to distinguish among commonwealth accents-a matter of exposure, no more. But interacting with darker-skinned strangers always sends a special nervousness spiking through her. She worries they can sense this wrongness of hers: an ignorance and curiosity she's learned to never admit to aloud.
And Linda is curious about the incoming woman. She's striking. Her black hair is short and spiky, save for a violet-dyed swath that falls across one temple, and even burdened with the box she moves with a grace and confidence Linda covets. When the woman emerges into the lobby, it's as a conqueror. Her eyes catch Linda's and she chirps, "Afternoon." Her irises are the color and pattern of crystallized honey. Linda shifts her gaze to the floor.
As the attendant scurries to help the newcomer, Linda pushes out ...
