This book started really well but became bogged down with travel descriptions and dialogue. I found it hard to really form a clear picture of Eve and the almost romance between her and Brian was a disappointment. Although I didn't pick the ending, I couldn't really get involved in this book to care about how it finished. ( )

Flashback. my second audio book. was enjoyable if a little hard to follow at times. That may have had something to do with dodging traffic and keeping track of the story at the same time!

I would like to have read the book prior to hearing the audio version. However, it was more interesting than some of the drive time radio. ( )

Flashback is a great thriiler. An unconscious young American woman is rescued from the side of a road in Burgundy. She recovers but has lost her memory and lives a tranquil life at a nunnery until a group of masked men break in to the nunnery looking for her. ( )

FLASHBACK starts off with a nun performing an evening ritual in a chapel at a French Benedictine convent. But any notions that this book will start slowly and quietly are swiftly put to rest when the nun gets grabbed by a man--one of a band of armed thugs who creep up on the chapel in the gathering gloom and massacre all the nuns (all except the nun who's grabbed, but breaks free and gets away). While he has her, the man briefly questions the nun about a woman the convent took in--an American who's lost her memory, who they refer to as Eve.

Fortunately, Eve's with her shrink at the time, trying to deal with her memory loss issues and strange dreams that suggest she's perhaps not the nicest person, that she may have a sordid past that's possibly too painful for her to want to recall. Her memory loss was caused by a bullet shot through her brain. (That's a bad sign of some sort.) She can recall language skills, rudimentary tasks and other practical things. She just can't remember who she is or how she ended up in a field in France, with a bullet in her head.

Eve returns to the convent and is horrified to learn of the massacre. She talks to the sole surviving nun, who tells her, They came for you. These words send Eve off and running, with the reader happily following along. She can't stay at the convent, but must find out who she is. Her only clue is a Moroccan ferry ticket (scribbled with strange Arabic letters) in her pocket. So, Eve grabs a dead nun's passport, dyes her hair to match the photo and it's off to Morocco she goes. Where she meets a number of interesting, but not always friendly, people, including another American named Brian, who's . . . well, really interesting.

Jenny Siler, who also writes as Alex Carr, has an uncanny knack for capturing the feel--the sights, sounds and smells--of the exotic locales where Eve ends up. Her evocative descriptions of each place from Morocco to Bratislava are sometimes so thick with foreign place names, you may find it mentally tongue-twisting. But she can nail a scene with a single well-crafted phrase. Her sardonic sense of humor also stands her in good stead--especially when she writes about the American expatriate crowd. And the plot takes so many twists and turns, I thought I'd get mental whiplash. It's a story that keeps you guessing and turning the pages. Keeps raising the question: who can Eve trust?

The entire review is online at http://thebookgrrl.blogspot.com/2009/04/flashback-explores-memory-in-page.html ( )

I could not put this book down.

What a fun read. I usually do not like mystery/detective/murder books, but this one was a real treat.

Who is Eve? Who is Hannah Boyle? Why did she show up at a convent in France?

This book is an exhilirating trip through Morocco, Spain, and France. I have also been reading books with an amnesiac theme, which is why this book initially appealed to me.

The detail that Jenny puts into each page is incredible! I found the fast pace to be thrilling -- OK, so it wasn't a "water tight" thriller - the characters, the pace and the speed of the book made up for it! ( )