When I finished reading this book, I rattled off a string of superlatives in my head of how wonderful it was (since as always I’m super late in writing this up, I can’t remember the half of them) something like: beautiful, poetic, gripping, relatable, intelligent, thoughtful, devastating, fun, amazing… (and so on – you get the picture!).
The plot is similar to another book which I very much enjoyed, ‘The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue’. In both cases, the title character is forgettable. I don’t mean that the book is boring – far from it. The premise of the story is that people forget their encounters with Hope as soon as they stop seeing her. As a lifelong introvert, I have often thought this should be my superpower – but in fact it makes it impossible to have a job, or relationships, or rent or buy a house. Hope must become a criminal in order to live, and she’s good at it. Luckily she is able to have an internet presence and a lot of the plot of the book is based around the profiling and shaping of people by the internet companies. Typical of Claire North (I have become a massive Claire North fan in recent times!) the story is very thought provoking and deep and I loved it.
Sarah Wray Writer 