The Girl I Used to Know by Faith Hogan (Book Beginnings & Friday 56)

Every so often a book comes along that shocks me with how very much I love it. Faith Hogan's The Girl I Used to Know is one of those books. I was expecting to like it ... otherwise I wouldn't have requested it from NetGalley and Aria in the first place ... but it absolutely stole my heart. More accurately, Tess and Amanda stole my heart.

Tess lives in Amanda's basement -- much to the dismay of Amanda and her husband, Richard. She's a cantankerous woman in her mid-sixties and does whatever she can to keep her flat and keep her landlords as on edge as possible. She wasn't always miserable, but something happened years prior that more or less stole her spirit.

Amanda is busy being a society wife and mother, maintaining the perfect house, and slowly becoming unrecognizable to even herself. She once had spunk and artistic dreams and now she has weekly coffee/gossip sessions with the other wives where she finds herself eating a bit too much and losing herself a bit more.

The two definitely don't like each other. They don't even really know each other in spite of having lived at the same address for many years. Of course all of this begins to change as each decides to re-know themselves, they end up knowing each other. What a wonderful combination they make, too! Add in the other characters who tag along on their journey's of rediscovery (sometimes knowingly, sometimes not), and we've ended up with a book that kept me up in the middle of the night more than once because "just one more chapter" kept turning into several.

Highly recommended to anyone who has ever looked in the mirror and had to wonder what in the world happened ... and to anyone who just loves a good story with amazingly rich and complex characters.

Friday 56 (today is 56% from the ebook) is hosted at Freda's Voice

& Book Beginnings (share the first few sentences) is at Rose City Reader.

Amazon Description