Don’t Forget Me (ARC Review)

If I had noticed beforehand that Don’t Forget Me was a translated work, I probably wouldn’t have requested it. Even the best translations are like Mike Teavee in Willy Wonka getting sent over the airwaves; something gets lost along the way that can never be regained again (even through extreme stretching).

But only so many of these books faults can be chalked up to not being read in its original language.

The plot is average at best, a clear cold-case-come-up-again story with amateur detectives. It’s relatively easy, throughout the story, for the main characters to get to the bottom of things. They rarely even have to ask a witness twice before they’re spilling their guts, even though it’s clear that the two MCs have no authority to be asking these questions or investigating the case. There’s very little suspense built up and with so few twists and turns, the plot becomes so clear-cut that you can see most things coming from a mile away.

Even if a surprising plot was not my number one need in a thriller (which it is…), I would have had trouble being invested when I didn’t care about the characters. There’s barely any time spent on characterizing them beyond telling the reader what cliche roles they fill in the story; psychiatrist with a troubled past, obsessive ex-policeman, etc. But there’s so little to go off of that they barely even fill out these tropes. We’re still getting tidbits about them and their backstories over three-quarters of the way through the book. All but these main characters come and go depending on whether they are being interviewed or not, which means that everyone ends up being (very obviously) a means of furthering the plot and never felt like real emotional beings.

This was only made worse by the dialogue. The robotic voice of every character I can, perhaps, blame on translation, but the utter lack of dialogue tags and the sheer amount of speech rather than description can’t be. The story refers, at one point, to certain sections being dialogue-heavy because it’s trying to mimic a script, and although this might be an interesting concept, it doesn’t actually relate to the story enough to work even if it was done well (and it isn’t). As it is, there is so little description, not only of the characters but of everything, that the story feels incredibly hollow and falls into that terrible category of way too much tell and not enough show.

I wish that, amongst all these negatives, I could point out a positive, but reading this book for me was a chore, like doing the laundry or scrubbing the toilet. From start to finish it felt like something I needed to check off my to-do list, and looking forward to this feeling of accomplishment was the only thing that spurred me through the short chapters.

I rated Don’t Forget Me 1 out of 5 stars, making it my lowest rated book of the year. I would not recommend it to anyone who is not a die-hard, have-already-read-everything-else thriller fan. I can only hope (assume) that it is much better in its original German form.

Thank you to Netgalley and Amazon Publishing UK for the opportunity to read an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.