Mark This Book Monday: Don't Look Back by Jennifer L Armentrout!!

Hello everyone! This week the book I'm gonna be reviewing as the first entry for Mark This Book Monday is all about a book that is not part of any of my challenges, so it was what I call one of my "me" reads! One of those books I decided to read cause I wanted to, and that help me take a breather from focusing on reading ARCs or review copies, or series or older books from my TBR list or dystopians. Just a shiny new book I'm excited to read!



Don't Look Back by Jennifer L. Armentrout

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The first time I saw this book I wasn't feeling particularly keen on it. I skimmed the synopsis a bit and it seemed to me that it'd be high school drama with mean girls steamy romance JLA style. I thought of skipping this one. But then I started seeing some really positive reviews and in most of them they described the book as a YA thriller with a murder mystery, and that totally piqued my curiosity, so I ended up preordering it for my Kindle.

I wish I would have got the US version of the cover, cause even if the UK is also relevant to the story with the waterfall and red dress, the US one with the music box's ballerina is not only relevant but also quite creepy!

The story starts with Sam, our main character finding her way to a road where she's found by the police, she doesn't remember anything about her life, doesn't even recognize her face or know her own name. While in the hospital she discovers that she disappeared with her best friend, Cassie, and that she's still missing. Sam's frustrated and scared of how much of a blank everything in her life is for her, and once she starts finding out about who she is, she discovers that she wasn't a very nice person at all.

I really liked how Sam started trying to discover who she was, and how her change came about. I never had any issues believing how she could be a mean girl but then be different with no memories of herself. Everyone kept talking about her change in attitude and demeanor when she became best friends with Cassie, and without any memories to make her bitter or jaded, she could just be a different person.  What I liked was how much she wanted to help find Cassie, trying to remember, even if she didn't have any memories of their friendship, even more when most people that had known Cassie weren't all that distraught about her disappearance.

JLA has proven with this book that she know how to write a mean thriller, with plenty of suspense, suspicion, red herrings and a big shock at the end. You will find cliches in this book, but the author manages to weave them into the story flawlessly in a way that they won't seem so cliched anymore. I kept suspecting this character and that character but never once did I suspect the real culprit until maybe one page before Sam herself figures it out! All the doubts thrown at Sam that make her doubt if she's getting her memories back or if she's just going insane with hallucinations are fantastic, and you get more than one twist along the way.

No book by JLA would be complete without some romance, and she does know a thing or two about writing romance. This one felt much more different than the previous ones I've read and Carson is quite a change from previous love interests in her books. He's a good guy through and through with a lil bit of mischiviousness thrown for good measure. There might be hints at a love triangle, but it never really is realized as such.

A real pager turner that kept me up late at night till I finished it, very well deserving of 4 stars!



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