The premise of Cate Quinn’s Before I Disappear immediately caught my attention. A criminologist wakes up in a remote Iowa motel with no memory of how she got there, a new identity, and people around her who claim to be protecting her. With a major criminal trial approaching, a police officer assigned to guard her, and a fiancé secretly tracking her down, April Anderson has plenty of reasons to question what she has been told. Even her own memories may be working against her. Quinn brings together several familiar thriller tropes in a combination I hadn’t encountered before, and I was eager to see how she would make them work together. Unfortunately, the execution falls well short of the premise’s potential.
April’s predicament offers plenty of opportunities for suspense. She cannot trust her recollections, and the people who supposedly have her best interests at heart may not be telling her the truth. As fragments of her memory return, she begins to uncover a version of herself she would rather not confront. The approaching trial gives her search for answers a deadline, while the possibility that someone wants her dead raises the stakes. There is a compelling thriller buried in this setup, and I could see what Quinn was aiming for. The problem is that a story with so many moving parts needs careful construction to keep the reader oriented while still withholding information for a satisfying reveal. Too often, Before I Disappear leaves me struggling to understand the basic sequence of events rather than wondering what will happen next.
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