Reviewed by Jess
TITLE: The Amnesia Project
AUTHOR: Barbara Winkes
PUBLISHER: Self-Published
LENGTH: 219 pages
RELEASE DATE: April 19, 2018
BLURB:
Romantic suspense with a dystopian twist…
What happened behind these doors?
In the summer of 2013, three young women and a teenage girl take a trip to New York City…Only three of them return.
Paige’s disappearance marks deep incisions in the women’s lives, impacting friendships, relationships and careers. Joy retreats. Paige’s older sister Alice seeks solace in alcohol. Dani vows to leave no stone unturned, feeling guilty and conflicted after seventeen-year-old Paige revealed her crush to her shortly before she vanished. More than a decade later, Dani uncovers the shocking truth.
REVIEW:
This is my first book by Barbara Winkes, though she’s a prolific writer in the lesfic community. It’s a slightly dystopian thriller, somewhat of an underground Handmaid’s Tale-type story with a main lesbian romance. I definitely found myself more intrigued by the mystery elements than the characters or romance.
This is a very timely story. It’s one that will make any modern woman shiver while reading. As you delve deeper into Paige’s disappearance along with Dani, you’ll keep thinking, no, it can’t possibly be what I think it is, and then it gets worse. The fact that pretty much all of the important characters are women makes the misogyny-fueled plot even grittier—we want justice alongside them, even though we don’t get into their heads and psyches as much as I wish we could.
The thriller plot itself kept me turning the page, but I felt a disconnect from the characters because we never got to know them very well or get a feel for their relationships. Alice, Joy, and Dani are supposed to be best friends, but we don’t know much about them and we don’t really see them bond like friends should. And Dani and Paige’s romance seems to be very surface-level and not evolve much past a crush and a first kiss, even though we’re supposed to believe it is true love. I didn’t have a feel for each woman’s individual personality, her traits, her special quirks. The plot certainly drew me in, but to keep me really invested, I needed a closer look at these characters.
There were also some plot inconsistencies and errors that took me out of the story. The timelines can be a little messy—the blurb says the women went to New York in 2013, but they actually went in 2003, making the bulk of the story take place 13 years later in 2016. And Paige’s stated birthdate of either 1993 or 1994 doesn’t make sense, because she would’ve only been nine or ten in New York when she was definitely 17 (which is an important plot point). I tend to read mysteries very quickly, often missing little details that die-hard mystery readers would pick up on right away, so the fact that I noticed these things immediately shows this story needed another pair of eyes to work out those kinks.
I won’t reveal any more of the book’s layered and complex plot. It’s better to go in knowing less, especially as more secrets are uncovered. While I felt Winkes could’ve delved a little deeper into her characters and their relationships, this thriller will keep you guessing and keep you wanting more.
RATING: 
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