“What Alice Forgot” by Liane Moriarty

The spell has broken. After having enjoyed the Nine Perfect Strangers TV series and the books Apples Never Fall and Big Little Lies, this one missed the mark for me. It was just so . .  . silly. I mean of course I like to have fun while I read! But this book felt like it was firmly in the Chick Lit category which I always suspected Moriarty's books belonged in, and which I typically can't stomach (even if I can't explain why). 

What Alice Forgot is the story of Alice Love, a soon-to-be forty-year-old mom of three, who comes to on the gym floor thinking it is 1998 instead of 2008. She remembers her first thirty years of life perfectly normally, but it's as if the bump on her head knocked the past decade right out of her memory. Her children are strangers to her, and what's this? She and her husband have separated? AND she's in charge of Mega Meringue Day, which will put the local school in the Guinness Book of World Records? Ahahaha lol blech. 

I think I have reached the point where I’ve read enough of this author’s books. To be fair . . . I really enjoyed her other stories, and possibly my enjoyment increased with their chronological releases? (Like, I've enjoyed the newest one the most, etc.) I could be wrong but it seems like the books have become more clever as they've gone along, and it's the cleverness that draws me in and that makes me more accepting of the Chicky-Litty aspects. Also, maybe I had some personal issues with this book? For instance, the thought of getting back together with my ex makes me gag. And the idea of my best friends being a couple named Mike and Gina is laughable (inside joke). But my gut instinct is currently telling me to move on. 

And part of the reason I need to move on is because I have too many other books I want to read more. Actually I know just exactly how many unread books I have in my house at the moment (and I think I might possibly have ordered eleven more yesterday . . . ?) thanks to something super cool: my favorite new app, BookBuddy. (And I don't even get any kind of compensation for telling you about it, but I'm telling you about it anyway. That's how much I love it.) I have scanned all of the books I own into this app, and it's like my own little super-useful digital card catalog. I can see how many are read, unread, or being read; I can view them by author, or by title, or by genre (and then some); I can mark books as favorites or "loaned out"; I can search for books by key word, title, author. Using this app I even discovered I unintentionally had a half dozen or so duplicate copies of books! Anyway, if you are a reading this blog I assume you are a reader, and I just thought you might appreciate this app as much as I do.