3 STARS ✮ STYLO FANTÔME ✮ MUSCLE MEMORY

MUSCLE MEMORY

Stylo Fantôme

✮✮✮ 3 STARS ✮✮✮

Her lips, the way she feels, how she moves against me. Her voice when she laughs, her eyes when she cries. Her soul connected to mine, for better or for worse, for all eternity.

I don't remember...

A blank face. Unrecognizable. The darkness and impenetrable fog, day after day after day. Who am I? And for that matter, who is she?

I can't remember...

Two sides to the same coin – one wants to remember, and the other wants to stay forgotten. Which side will win? Can he trust his heart to bring him back to her? Or will she stay lost in the fog forever?

I might never remember...

Trope I’m not fond of: amnesia.

Trope this book contains: amnesia.

Yes, you may stare at me like that. I deserve it. It’s a bit like me going to the shop, buying myself a bag of carrots and cooking a huge pile to eat. I don’t like carrots. But the cover was so pretty and ~~I didn’t read the blurb~~…I have no other excuse.

I have no identity. No social security card, and no possibility of getting a new one, which means no job. I have no name, no birth certificate, no credit score, no references?”

I wouldn’t say Stylo Fantôme has converted me, but never once did I feel the need to DNF Muscle Memory because the story she’s written grabbed me as Jon Doherty tries to come to terms with the life he lost in the blink of an eye and the one he’s found himself dropped into.

The love of her life doesn't even remember her, and she has to watch him parading around with another woman, and she does it all with a smile.”

It was fairly cut and dried for me when it came to my feelings on the characters, particularly Delaney and Kitty. Kitty, seemed to be a character inserted for readers to dislike and it worked as I found her a weak, one-dimensional potential bunny-boiler who I struggled to feel any empathy for and who overpowered the real relationship in this story—Jon and Delaney’s.

I don't remember you. I didn't before, and I won't after. But I swear to you, I remember this. I remember us.”

Whilst they weren’t necessarily good for one another before his memory loss, as they get to know one another again under changed circumstances, it was clear where my allegiance lay. But I have to be honest in that Jon and Delaney lacked the emotional punch I was hoping they’d create. There were some truly beautiful moments between them and ones which were penned equally as beautifully, but the narrative style didn’t give me that opportunity to really get into their minds. And if I had, I think that could have been the game changer here.

Overall though, Stylo Fantôme did enough to keep me captive and I’d be interested in reading more for her. I have to be honest though, whilst it’s had no bearing on my rating as that would just be unfair, amnesia is still my literary carrot.