Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Everything She Forgot: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Everything She Forgot: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Everything She Forgot: A Novel
    Ebook446 pages7 hours

    Everything She Forgot: A Novel

    By Lisa Ballantyne

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    Listen to the audiobook instead

    About this ebook

    Some things aren't meant to be remembered . . .

    They're calling it the worst pileup in London history. Margaret Holloway is driving home, but her mind is elsewhere—on a troubled student, her daughter's acting class, the next day's meeting—when she's rear-ended and trapped in the wreckage. Just as she begins to panic, a disfigured stranger pulls her from the car seconds before it's engulfed in flames. Then he simply disappears.

    Though she escapes with minor injuries, Margaret feels that something's wrong. She's having trouble concentrating. Her emotions are running wild. More than that, flashbacks to the crash are also dredging up lost associations from her childhood, fragments of events that had been wiped from her memory. Whatever happened, she didn't merely forget—she chose to forget. And somehow, Margaret knows deep down that it has something to do with the man who saved her life.

    As Margaret uncovers a mystery with chilling implications for her family and her very identity, Everything She Forgot winds through a riveting dual narrative and asks the question: How far would you go to hide the truth—from yourself?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 6, 2015
    ISBN9780062391490
    Author

    Lisa Ballantyne

    Lisa Ballantyne is the author of the Edgar Award-nominated The Guilty One. She lived and worked in China for many years and started writing seriously while she was there. Ballantyne now lives in Glasgow, Scotland.

    Read more from Lisa Ballantyne

    Related to Everything She Forgot

    Related ebooks

    Suspense For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      September’s BOOK CLUB

      Aug 4, 2022

      It’s been a decade since Hannah was at Oxford, yet she’ll never forget it. Her room-mate, April, was killed by one of the university porters. Now he’s dead and Hannah wonders if she helped send an innocent man to prison. But if Hannah digs too deep,

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Girls off the Cliff

      May 6, 2017

      The Girls off the Cliff
      1 min read

    • Article

      Modern MURDER

      Apr 4, 2021

      Just when thrillers were starting to seem a bit samey, along comes Harper Brown, the heroine of The Paris Affair. It feels like Harper really belongs in a chick-lit novel. Dumped by her cheating boyfriend, she’s sworn off love and her only involvemen

      1 min read

    • Article

      Secrets, Lies And Mysteries

      Sep 8, 2020

      Adelightful,discombobulating read from the author of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. It’s set in a dreamlike house inhabited by the singular and self-sufficient Piranesi, who is not sure how he got there or who he is. Attempting to unravel his story

      1 min read

    • Article

      Trouble Brews In Minnesota

      Jul 29, 2019

      Edith and Helen Calder haven’t spoken in decades. The sisters’ rift began after the death of their father, who left all the money from the family’s farm to Helen so she could fulfill her dream of opening a brewery. In J. Ryan Stradal’s The Lager Quee

      1 min read

    • Article

      January Fiction

      Dec 14, 2021

      The Maid by Nita Prose HarperCollins, £14.99 Molly Gray, the narrator of Nita Prose’s startlingly good debut novel, is a young woman who knows her place—and who rather likes it. For “approximately four years, 13 weeks, and five days” she’s been worki

      2 min read

    • Article

      Lauren H Brandenburg

      Jun 4, 2020

      Lauren H Brandenburg
      2 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Apr 1, 2020

      It’s always an exciting moment when the Queen of Crime announces her latest book – and, in this case, a new series. Lynda La Plante’s brand-new hero DC Jack Warr finds himself drawn into a chilling investigation after moving to London. When a badly b

      1 min read

    • Article

      Crimes of the Heart

      Nov 5, 2016

      Like many of his novels, Spanish author Javier Marías’ new book, Thus Bad Begins, isn’t exactly a mystery, though it is mysterious. Here, the 65-year-old perennial Nobel favorite tells the story of Juan de Vere, a young man working for a film directo

      1 min read

    • Article

      Social Promotion

      Mar 19, 2024

      I didn’t understand. If that boy couldn’t read, why was he up there? The girl they originally had hosting the ceremony didn’t show, but why they put that boy there? Just because he volunteer for everything? You can’t read off enthusiasm. It made the

      21 min read

    • Article

      MUM IS MISSING Liane Moriarty

      Sep 8, 2021

      MUM IS MISSING Liane Moriarty
      7 min read

    • Article

      MUM IS MISSING Liane Moriarty

      Sep 8, 2021

      MUM IS MISSING Liane Moriarty
      7 min read

    • Article

      MUM IS MISSING Liane Moriarty

      Sep 8, 2021

      MUM IS MISSING Liane Moriarty
      7 min read

    • Article

      A Double Life

      Dec 7, 2020

      Sadie is in the kitchen, already dressed in school uniform, fastening the clips on the violin she chose for her most recent birthday, when Gabriela heads downstairs the following morning. Seven years old: how the hell did that happen? Briefly, she wo

      6 min read

    • Article

      Lost Children

      Aug 4, 2022

      Lost Children
      5 min read

    • Article

      Reunion

      Feb 4, 2021

      Reunion
      4 min read

    • Article

      Women’s Work

      Dec 15, 2020

      Women’s Work
      12 min read

    • Article

      Summer Reads

      Dec 30, 2019

      Summer Reads
      7 min read

    • Article

      How Postcards From My Mother Helped Me Survive Childhood

      Mar 3, 2017

      For years, my mother wrote to me every day. I’d been sent away to boarding school and for the first weeks was forbidden to call home­. I was eleven. This was just before mobile phones came beeping and clicking into the lives of everyday people. I di

      4 min read

    • Article

      Evening Star

      Sep 10, 2021

      A red streak of light flashed across the curtains. Robert grimaced and Grace got up to look out the window. There were two police cars pulling into the parking lot and it had started to snow again. She turned around. Robert was kneeling on the bed. H

      15 min read

    Reviews for Everything She Forgot

    3.5/5

    51 ratings7 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      Lisa Ballantyne’s second novel, Everything She Forgot (published in the UK as Redemption Road), is a story of abduction, repressed memory and good intentions gone awry. In this novel the author skillfully weaves together two separate but intimately connected narrative threads. In December 2013 Margaret Holloway, a teacher in her mid-thirties and married mother of two, is involved in a disastrous multi-vehicle pile-up and is pulled from her burning car by a stranger who risks his own life and suffers serious injuries in order to save her. The man ends up in hospital in an induced coma, his life hanging by a thread, and Margaret, compelled by guilt and curiosity, becomes obsessed with learning as much about him as she can, with the goal of finding out why he would put himself in life-threatening danger for her sake. In 1985, 27-year-old George McLaughlin, the youngest member of the Glasgow McLaughlins, a notorious crime family with a reputation for brutality and ruthlessness, believes he has found a way to escape the business. Driving a stolen car and with a bag of cash in the trunk, he makes his way to Scotland’s north coast, to Thurso, where the love of his life, Kathleen, is living with the daughter that George fathered seven years earlier but was never able to get close to. In the naïve and short-sighted fashion that we learn is typical of him, George has devised a plan: he and Kathleen will be reunited, he will finally meet his daughter Molly, love will be rekindled, and the three of them will abscond and start a new life together in Penzance, where an empty cottage that George inherited from his deceased mother awaits. Not surprisingly, things don’t work out quite as George had hoped, and he ends up speeding away from the scene of a violent abduction with a hostile and weeping 7-year-old in the car, leaving behind several witnesses, a distraught Kathleen, and a police force mobilizing for a manhunt (and don’t forget the stolen car). The tale that Ballantyne relates from this frenzied beginning is engaging on multiple levels and crammed with enough detail and backstory to breathe life into the characters, settings and situations and endow it with more than a token degree of suspense. Back in 2013, the car accident has resurrected memories that Margaret had buried, memories that eventually lead to revelations and the solution to a mystery. However, the plot’s reliance on Margaret’s slowly returning recollections of a traumatic event from her childhood presents a problem because the reader will have figured things out long before she has. Indeed, Ballantyne has structured her novel so that its credibility rests almost exclusively on the relationship that develops between George and Molly while they’re on the road together, fleeing not just the police, but also George’s family and a tenacious self-serving reporter. It is here that Ballantyne succeeds in brilliant fashion, giving us a high-stakes chase amidst the gradually blossoming connection between two people that passes convincingly through stages of antagonism and suspicion toward a state of cautious trust, mutual affection and something approaching love. The story does have a few problems besides Margaret’s awakening memory. Readers will notice the author’s proclivity for sentimentality, particularly where Molly and George are concerned. As well, the moral world of the novel is lacking somewhat in depth, eschewing shades of gray in favour of stark black and white, where absolute good on one side stands in opposition to absolute evil on the other. Several characters depicted as unremittingly cruel and loathsome strain credibility, and readers may find some of the human-on-human cruelty depicted here gratuitous. Still, in Everything She Forgot aka Redemption Road, though maybe not up to the standard she set for herself in her stellar debut novel, The Guilty One, Lisa Ballantyne has crafted an enjoyable and diverting page turner, albeit one that comes with a few caveats.
    • 4/5
      Margaret Holloway is a devoted teacher as well as a loving wife, mother, and daughter. After fighting to keep a student in school, she begins her drive home only to wind up in a horrific multi-car accident. Margaret is trapped in her car as it begins to burn due to a ruptured fuel tank. Thankfully, she's saved by a stranger, who quickly disappears from the scene. The accident and the kindness of this stranger awaken long-lost memories in Everything She Forgot.The story begins in December 2013 on the day of the tragic multi-car accident, and alternates between December 2013 and late September and early October 1985 as we're introduced to seven-year-old Molly Henderson, Big George McLaughlin, Angus Campbell, and Kathleen Henderson. Ms. Ballantyne provides the backstory to George McLaughlin's life and obsession with the love of his life, Kathleen Jamieson, and their daughter Molly. George decides to find Kathleen and, once again, ask her to marry him, but he finds that Kathleen is married and seems to be quite happy in her new life. He then decides to introduce himself to his daughter Molly, only after seeing her being bullied by three girls on her way to school. That introduction turns into an unplanned abduction that forces George to run from Scotland into England with his daughter. Angus Campbell is a local reporter in the area Molly was abducted from. All he wants is to be a respected journalist and he decides that it is his duty to find out all he can about Molly and Kathleen and he has to be the one to bring Molly safely back home. Everything She Forgot is a story that I didn't want to put down. I quickly became invested in Margaret, George, and Molly's stories and wanting to know what happens next. I wanted to know more about Margaret and her apparent obsession with the stranger that saved her. I needed to know more about George and Molly and their "adventure" into England. The more I read, the more I found myself pulled into the story. I empathized with Kathleen as she awaited news about her daughter. I felt sorry for George and the horrible childhood he had but rejoiced over the connections he was building with his daughter. His abduction of Molly may not have been planned, but it still caused needless trauma to Molly and her parents. It took a while for me to get used to the back-and-forth between past and present, but once I did the story seemed to suck me in. Did I enjoy Everything She Forgot? Yes! Ms. Ballantyne has crafted a beautiful and haunting story about memories, relationships, and the need for family. If you enjoy reading well-written stories, then you'll want to add Everything She Forgot to your reading list.
    • 5/5
      An excellent book that I read straight through after picking it up to place on my to read pile! The author, Lisa Ballantyne does an excellent job of moving back and forth between the past and present. Margaret Holloway is caught in the worst pile-up in London history. She's trapped in her car until a disfigured man pulls her from the car seconds before it catches fire. Then, he's gone. Though Margaret knows she has been traumatized by the accident, she is also remembering things from her childhood that had been wiped from her memory. Highly recommended. In fact, I have already ordered her first book, The Guilty One and can't wait to read that as well.
    • 4/5
      Everything She Forgot by Lisa Ballantyne is a highly recommended character study of love and redemption set in two time periods.

      In 2013 Margaret Holloway is driving home on icy, snowy roads when she finds herself in a huge multi-car pile-up. Margaret is stuck in her car and unable to get out. When she smells gas and realizes her car is on fire, Margaret is sure she is going to die. Then, out of nowhere, a man comes and tries to help her escape. He hurts his hand when breaking her window, but manages to get her out of the car. Then he seemingly disappears in the melee surrounding the huge accident.

      After the accident, Margaret finds herself unable to concentrate. She is having flashbacks to the crash and strangely remembering things from her childhood that she thought she had forgotten, or repressed. She also finds herself drawn to find and sit in the hospital at the bedside of the man who saved her. She learns his name is Maxwell Brown and that he's had no other visitors.

      Alternating chapters are set in 1982. Big George McLaughlin was born into a family of gangsters but he just wants to get back together with his first girlfriend and help raise his daughter, Molly, away from his family. When he meets Molly, now age 7, on her way to school, he ends up unwittingly abducting her. We also learn of George's childhood. While the two are on the run and bonding, a strange reporter named Angus Campbell is trying to figure out who abducted Molly and make a name for himself.

      The present day story is told through Margaret's point of view, while the story set in 1985 is told through multiple points of view, although mainly through George and Angus.

      I was looking forward to reading Everything She Forgot after reading The Guilty One and I wasn't disappointed. Although it is being described as a mystery, it is really more of a character study. While there is a mystery, much of it will be easily discerned early on by most readers. There are several surprises, though, that you won't figure out beforehand. What will compel you to keep reading is the quality of the writing, the answers to a few nagging questions, and the emotional connection you will feel for Margaret and George.

      Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of HarperCollins for review purposes.
    • 4/5
      "Everything she forgot" by Lisa Ballantyne was a pretty good read. I figured out the "twist" pretty quickly, but it didn't hamper my reading of the book. We'll formed and defined characters. A good read for a rainy day.
    • 3/5
      [Everything She Forgot] by Lisa Ballantyne2.5&#9733'sFrom The Book:Some things aren't meant to be remembered . . .They're calling it the worst pileup in London history. Margaret Holloway is driving home, but her mind is elsewhere—on a troubled student, her daughter's acting class, the next day's meeting—when she's rear-ended and trapped in the wreckage. Just as she begins to panic, a disfigured stranger pulls her from the car seconds before it's engulfed in flames. Then he simply disappears. Though she escapes with minor injuries, Margaret feels that something's wrong. She's having trouble concentrating. Her emotions are running wild. More than that, flashbacks to the crash are also dredging up lost associations from her childhood, fragments of events that had been wiped from her memory. Whatever happened, she didn't merely forget—she chose to forget. And somehow, Margaret knows deep down that it has something to do with the man who saved her life.As Margaret uncovers a mystery with chilling implications for her family and her very identity, [Everything She Forgot] winds through a riveting dual narrative and asks the question: How far would you go to hide the truth—from yourself?My Thoughts:A first book for this author so I didn't expect it to be outstanding...but I did have a reasonable expectation for it to be more closely related to the what the description described. It started out with the accident and the stranger saving Margaret's life. It was a good exciting start...then it switched to a mob type man...George McLaughlin's story of his lost love and the seven year old daughter that he hasn't seen since her birth. When it returns to Margaret she seems to just be drifting through life and spending every moment she can with the man who saved her life and is now in a coma. Back and forth it goes between 1985 and 2013. Both stories by themselves would have made an excellent book but together...they are just two stories with no merging.
    • 3/5
      Fair, predictable story line. 7yo is abducted from school by her biological father, a bumbling but charming man, who panics and takes the child on a road trip. When they are found, he drives off in the van that bursts into flames and plunges into the sea. The story goes back and forth between 7yo Moll and now grown Margaret, who has forgotten that time.