Blame by Jeff Abbott
Blame is a standalone novel by Jeff Abbott, the author of the Sam Capra series. I love the series, so I was curious about his other books, thus I picked up Blame.
After a few pages, the first thing I said to myself was: “No, not another amnesia book!”. However, I shouldn’t have worried. This book is really different from the usual memory-loss thrillers.
Two years ago, Jane Norton and her friend and neighbor, David, were driving in the middle of the night and crashed the car, killing David and leaving Jane in a coma. When she woke up in the hospital, she had no idea who she was or where she was, or anything at all.
The problem was that Jane was driving said car, and in her jeans pocket, there was a piece of paper with Jane’s handwriting where she basically confessed to wanting to kill herself.
As soon as the news came out, everyone began to blame Jane for killing the town’s darling, David, in a selfish way. Her friends all left her, everyone at school booed her, and she was no longer welcome anywhere.
Jane became a recluse, she even moved away from home so she wouldn’t have to see David’s parents quietly blaming her as well from the next house.
Eventually, Jane has enough of her exclusion from the world, so she begins investigating. But nobody wants to tell her anything. Her memory only returned up to the age of 14, just before her dad’s deadly accident (some hint that it was a suicide, which Jane doesn’t want to believe).
The more she looks into it, the more she realizes that everyone is lying to her (but for what purpose?), and there is a big secret in her town that people are even killed for.
The book is a fantastic psychological thriller. Some would say it is a young adult (YA) book, however, it all feels more mature to me.
Jane is a strong person, albeit very confused at the moment, and through her investigation, she has to admit that she might not be quite the person she thought she would be either. But would she have gone as far as kill the very person she apparently loved with all her heart?
Towards the middle of the book, there were more suspects I could count. I had to keep a mental note of who is who and what is their interest in the case. At some point I suspected everyone!
The story was action-packed, and the suspense would keep you glued to the pages until the very surprising end. I had already several ideas of what went down during that fateful night, however nowhere was I close to the truth.
I only have one gripe with the book. In the book, the author mentions Faceplace as the popular social media site. I honestly don’t understand why he had to change Facebook to Faceplace. It was so awkward reading this word, my mind would stumble every time I’d see it. I know there is no issue with using terms such as Facebook and Twitter in books because the author actually mentioned Twitter at some point. So why not also Facebook?
However, if you can get past this small issue, Blame is a book well worth reading. I actually ended up reading it over two afternoons, because I could hardly put it down.
