How many times do plans that are made fall apart, and things put off for tomorrow never eventuate?
Chloe had mapped out her life in grids. Each represented a step toward her ultimate goal. In the last months of her senior year, her heart broke, but not due to love.
That someone had to die for her to live was difficult to come to terms with for her. After the transplant, nothing was ever the same.
Her memories now seem foreign to her. Flashes of visions that she knows are not connected to her life come and go.
Then there is the food she eats and the clothes she now chooses to wear. It’s like a rebellion is taking place in this new life she now has but is uncomfortable with. She has learnt about cellular memory, but surely?
She meets Kai. A gorgeous surfer who gives surfing lessons during the summer break. Falling in love was never in her plans. Something about the sea draws her to it. She buys a surfboard and finds she’s a natural.
Becoming even more daring, she drives a motor bike for the first time as if she was riding for years.
Chloe becomes obsessed with finding out who her donor was. Perhaps this knowledge would answer her countless confusing questions.
Who was the man sitting crying in a chair beside her hospital bed? Why does she continue to see images of a motorbike crashing in a tunnel? Whose memories are these if not hers, and what are they trying to tell her?
Chloe begins to feel that perhaps she is losing her grip on reality.
Learning about her donor doesn’t bring the comfort and closure that she imagined it would. It shatters everything that she believed in and hoped for, and forces her to question every aspect of life and death and love.
Everything I Thought I Knew is a fascinating debut novel that compels the reader to keep turning the pages to discover how the story will end. A one-sitting read, it is imaginative, with a startling end that will draw a gasp.
Title: Everything I Thought I Knew
Author: Shannon Takaoka
Publisher: ,Walker Books $ 18.99
Publication Date: 4 August 2021
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781406395365
For ages: 14+
Type: Young Adult Fiction
August 27, 2021 at 12:36AM Anastasia Gonis
