Forget Me Not by Willow Winters

*2 Debatable Stars**

I loved this book
I hated this book.
I love it.
But mostly I hate it.

I must admit, I've have been really into these dark psychological thrillers lately.

And this one started out SO GOOD!

*minor spoilers ahead*

I was completely captivated the first few chapters with the flashbacks of the Robin and John\Jay trauma and excited to see how it was all going to tie into the present. I was about a quarter of the way through when I figured out the psychological reasoning behind John and even still knowing this, I was curious how the story would unfold.

But that is when I got p***** off!

1st of all, we NEVER get the backstory at all of John's father and why he did what he did. Which is a pretty big chunk of the story considering he is how Robin and John even come together in the 1st place. There was a vague reference to John being blamed for his mother's death, but yet we don't get a backstory on that either.

What we get is about 30 or so years crammed into a unrealistic and way over the top trauma into a small timeframe that made believing any of it way too hard for me.

What's worse than that is the author decided to what seemed like a last minute decision to throw in a happy ending in there that made no sense at all.

So yeah, John finally gets reluctantly thrown in a hospital after repeatedly ramming his head into a bookshelf until the brink of death due to his psychological issues, after kidnapping and holding hostage the practically only woman he has ever known yet alone "loved" who is just as screwed up as he is. But now all of a sudden 2 short years later they are married with a baby on the way and having a freaking family BBQ with the neighbors??

Yeah, because that makes perfect sense!

Notable Quotes

• "I feel my walls break. She's powerful like that. Only her. I'm so fucking weak for her."
• "I want to take you away and keep you," he says, and a warmth flows through my body. He leans forward and I think he's going to kiss me, but he doesn't. Instead he whispers, "I want to fuck you until you forget. Until you're only mine."
• "It's why I want to let her go. And why I never will."
• "My memory destroyed me, but love is so much more. You can't forget love, no matter how hard you try."
• "It's funny that you break what you hate... yet I seem to be the opposite?"

The 11:05 Murders by Brian O'Hare

Genre: Crime/Thriller/Whodunit/Mystery

The 11:05 Murders by Brian O'Hare is volume two in a two-part series called the Inspector Sheehan Mysteries. The book has also gone on to earn the 2014 New Apple Award for Excellence by Independent Publishing. When victims start piling up after being killed in the same precise manner with a disturbing dismemberment, all on a Tuesday evening and each time of death being at exactly 11:05 p.m., the detectives of the Strandtown Police Station in Ireland must beat the clock to find the killer. Just when you think you have got it all figured out, they hit you with a ruse and suddenly you find yourself enticed into a 12-year-old suicide. Struggling to find a connection between the two incidents gets a hundred times more difficult when the murders point fingers at a few different possible suspects and a bunch of motives. Can they find the truth before another Tuesday night comes?

After reading a vast amount of positive reviews, I had high expectations for this book. While truly a captivating 'whodunit', I was certainly left a bit disappointed. I found all the characters to be pretty likable, except the main character of the story and that presents a huge problem. The perspective is a woman detective who has been scorned by the male population both in her love life and her in her former precinct, after discovering a huge corruption. While understandable and relatable, she comes off as way too cold and yet at times, the complete opposite. It is all rather bi-polar.

My second disappointment is how the story was articulated. While the concept was great, O'Hare has managed to turn it into a completely too coincidental story.  The characters are connected in a way that is hardly believable as well as how the murders were actually solved. On the subject of the murders, I had it all figured out less than halfway through, and that rarely happens to me as I am no good at solving mysteries I must say.

On a good note, I did very much enjoy the aspect and 'whodunit' concept of the story. Although I did figure it all out pretty early on, I was still completely enthralled enough to finish to find out how it all tied together in the end. O'Hare does have an easy and natural writing style that is a joy to follow, however, he does use a strong Irish dialect that took me a few chapters to get used to. Overall, I would rate The 11:05 Murders 3 out of 5 stars.

**Disclaimer: This book was sent to me as an ARC from Onlinebookclub.org in exchange for my honest review.