Title: The Other Me by Sarah Zachrich Jeng
Publisher: Berkley
Genre: Contemporary, Mystery, Suspense
Length: 352 pages
Book Rating: B+
Complimentary Review Copy Provided by Publisher Through NetGalley
Summary:
Two lives. The one you wanted. The one that wanted you.
Her birthday should be like any other night.
One minute Kelly’s a free-spirited artist in Chicago going to her best friend’s art show. The next, she opens a door and mysteriously emerges in her Michigan hometown. Suddenly her life is unrecognizable: She’s got twelve years of the wrong memories in her head and she’s married to Eric, a man she barely knew in high school.
Racing to get back to her old life, Kelly’s search leads only to more questions. In this life, she loves Eric and wants to trust him, but everything she discovers about him—including a connection to a mysterious tech startup—tells her she shouldn’t. And strange things keep happening. The tattoos she had when she was an artist briefly reappear on her skin, she remembers fights with Eric that he says never happened, and her relationships with loved ones both new and familiar seem to change without warning.
But the closer Kelly gets to putting the pieces together, the more her reality seems to shift. And if she can’t figure out what happened on her birthday, the next change could cost her everything…
Review:
The Other Me by Sarah Zachrich Jeng is a clever debut that is suspenseful and intriguing.
On her twenty-ninth birthday, Kelly Holter is celebrating her best friend Linnea’s newest art exhibit. Feeling a little ill, she walks through a rest room door into a completely different life. In this reality, Kelly is married to Eric Hyde and she works from home as a graphic designer. Completely unnerved, she has disorienting memories from both lives. In an attempt to figure out what is going on, Kelly travels from her married life in Davis City, MI to her old life in Chicago. While she finds her memories are accurate, the reality is not the same. Kelly returns to MI where she continues to try to understand exactly what is happening to her.
In her “real” life, Kelly is a struggling artist with a degree from the Art Institute. She is not overly close to her family and she is not interested in marriage. In the strange life she finds herself in with Eric, she is shocked at how much of herself she has turned over to him. Acting more like herself than Eric’s docile wife, Kelly continues digging for answers about how she traveled from reality one to another. As she spends with Eric, more memories of their time together creep in. Kelly is never quite at ease with her husband and armed with a few clues, she begins searching what has brought her to this point. And more importantly, how to return to her previous life in Chicago.
The Other Me is a spellbinding mystery with a unique premise and engaging storyline. Kelly is a no shrinking violet and she refuses to accept she cannot return to her real life. Eric is solicitous as long as Kelly acquiesces to his wishes. While Kelly admits Eric’s feelings for her ring true, she senses there is much more to him and their marriage that meets the eye. With a stunning plot twist, Sarah Zachrich Jeng brings this ingenious mystery to a surprisingly satisfying conclusion.
