Small Forgotten Moments - by Annalisa Crawford (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

***Silver Winner of the 2023 Wishing Shelf Book Awards for Books for Adults (Fiction)***

Is Zenna a muse, a sleep-deprived apparition, or something much more sinister?

Suffering long-term amnesia, artist Jo Mckye is ready to start a fresh, new project after the success of her debut exhibition. But the fictional subject of the collection, Zenna, won't let go so easily. Infiltrating Jo's dreams-and increasingly, her waking hours-Zenna is fast becoming a dangerous obsession.

Jo is confident the answers lie at her childhood home, an idyllic Cornish village on the south-east coast; she just doesn't know why. Only when she walks into the sea and almost drowns does the past start to unravel.

Haunting and melodic, fans of Daphne du Maurier and Daisy Johnson will adore this.

Review Quotes

"A deftly-told story of a young woman with amnesia investigating her own past. It's beguiling, haunting, beautifully paced and it kept me hooked to the very end." Michael Walters, author of The Complex.

"A work of literary fiction about a young woman named Jo Mckye who is an artist in London and who suffers from severe amnesia. She can't remember much about her past before the last three years. She doesn't know how her current friends, Nathan and Lily, came to be in her life. But she does have a recollection that her mother lives in Cornwall-and then there's Zenna, a girl she paints and sketches over and over again. All of her art is about Zenna. Jo has constant nightmares about this artwork too, and they're getting worse, but she can't even recognize a former boyfriend when he shows up at an exhibition of her art. Searching for answers, she returns to her mother's home where the truth about Zenna awaits. Zenna was a real person and Jo has been doing everything in her power to forget about her.

Annalisa Crawford's story is intense in emotion and does a good job of taking suspense in an intellectual direction. It links a strong mystery plot with a mesmerizing level of detail in Jo's mind because the mystery she has to solve is about herself. While it's a big challenge for Jo to be a detective when the clues are all embedded in her literally mind-numbing lack of memory, it's a delight for a reader to be swept along in the process with her. It's both poignant and action-packed. I couldn't put this book down because the creepy, fascinating concept of someone slowly having their memories resurface was so compelling and well shown. A talented work of fiction, Small Forgotten Moments builds minute-by-minute tension to a gripping conclusion as Jo's confused, yet assertive personality swirls from the pages much like the vividly described art of Zenna that she creates." Sarah Scheel, Readers' Favorite

"A spellbinding, intoxicating journey into the dark heart of obsession. Annalisa Crawford has penned another beautiful, heart-wrenching, epic masterpiece. I loved it." Tom Gillespie, author of The Strange Book of Jacob Boyce

"A soulful tale of painting, secrets and longing, which draws the reader into a world of mystery and memory. Filled with the colours of an artist's mind and set against the wild backdrop of the Cornwall coast - an enchanting read." Leonora Meriel, author of The Woman Behind the Waterfall