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Women's fiction at its best, What Alice Forgot is everything I've come to love from Liane Moriarty.

Alice gets bumped on her head and loses ten years of her memory. The last thing she remembers is being twenty-nine, in love with her husband Nick, and pregnant with their first child. Instead, she's now thirty-nine, has three children, and is about to get divorced. As she tries to piece together what happened, she must figure out who she really is and all that's important to her.

At first glance, this seems like a fluffy beach read of second chances and domestic drama. But the more I read, the more I discovered. Relationships are not easy, and the complexity of them and how the years can cause them to deteriorate is deftly captured in here. I found both Alice and Nick to be sympathetic characters, and could see how life and the stress of raising three children wore them out.

I also enjoyed the storyline with Alice's sister. Though I normally don't gravitate towards plots with siblings falling out or infertility, something about the way this was written made it feel universal. We all have family members we have less than stellar relationships with, and we all dream of things we want that we don't have. I found the exploration of when to give up and move on, versus staying and hoping, to be skillfully done.

Moriarty's writing is always eminently readable, and this book is no different. Once I started, I found it unputdownable. It was easy to get swept away into this story of interesting, complex characters and their difficult choices. There's also this subtle humor sprinkled throughout that keeps it from becoming too maudlin or sappy.

Still, it stays true to the genre, so eventually everyone gets what they want and everything is wrapped up neatly. But that doesn't detract from the story, which I found to be nuanced and fascinating. This is definitely one of my favorites from Liane Moriarty.

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See also, my thoughts on:
Big Little Lies
Nine Perfect Strangers
Apples Never Fall
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