Remembrance by Sara Hayes Dietz

Remembrance by Sara Hayes Dietz
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Release Date: 15 January 2025
Publisher: Fire & Feast Books
Format: Paperback
Source: Purchased from Amazon

FORGET EVERYTHING YOU THINK YOU KNOW. After a psychotic break lands Leah Harvey in a clinical trial for an experimental new treatment, she assumes that things are looking up. But when she's t-boned on her way to an appointment and ends up missing her monthly check-in, her symptoms come out of remission and flare up with a vengeance. At first, she chalks it up to residual effects of the accident, or to missing her treatment, but she's quickly drawn into a complex network of secrets threatening to burst. Not only is her view of her condition changed forever, but her understanding of her very self.

I bought this book last year (2025) after seeing it circulate on Substack Notes quite a bit by people whose taste I trust. Last year was also when I started venturing outside of my usual categories of literary fiction more and more. Since I enjoy watching thriller and horror on the screen, I've been looking for those types of books.

Sara Dietz checks many boxes for me in her book, Remembrance, even though based off of the cover and title, I wouldn't have guessed this was a psychological thriller at all. However, it did end up being a fast-paced read, and I binged it in one day. I love books about memory and with unreliable narrators who can't trust their own minds.

The story begins in media res, with the main character, Leah, experiencing a psychotic break, that lands her in a neurological clinical trial. Of course, any time there's a hospital and messing with the brain, I know there must be something going on. While this isn't written from the first-person perspective, it was close third-person, so I assumed from the outset that Leah's memories weren't reliable (that, and the fact that the book started with her not recognising people who clearly recognised her, so, y'know).

Early on, an accident forces Leah to miss one of her appointments and mess up her medication schedule, which sets the rest of the book in motion. She experiencing hallucinations again...or are they hallucinations? Individuals who claim to know her start telling her not to trust her neurologist, not to take her medication again, but who is really telling her the truth?

It's a tense, tightly woven plot that doesn't let up until its conclusion, and many secrets are revealed along the way.

The story lagged a bit toward the middle. Not all of the characters' actions made sense to me, especially the seemingly-out-of-nowhere romance. There aren't any plot twists, for readers who are looking for that type of book, but that didn't take away from my overall enjoyment. The ending felt a little too convenient, however. For such a long book, I didn't get the sense that I got to know any of the characters well.

Overall, I enjoyed Remembrance. It was an easy, straightforward read, and I would want to read future books by Dietz.

Who would like this: fans of fractured memory, unreliable narrators, found family, straightforward mysteries, The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins, Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn