Book Review: The Forgotten Hours by Katrin Schumann

The Forgotten Hours by Katrin Schumann follows Katie Gregory, a young professional in New York City, preparing for her father’s release from prison. The crime? The statutory rape of Katie’s best friend. But Katie was in the room that night, and she knows her father was innocent.

Katie refuses to believe the accusations that tore her family apart, and clings to the positive memories she had at the family’s cabin growing up. She drops her last name, ditches her best friend, and chooses lives the life she deserves.

Trigger Warning: This book touches multiple topics which might be hard to read for some audiences. Topics include rape, sexual assault, gaslighting, and alcoholism. Some scenes go into detail which may be uncomfortable for victims of abuse, especially abuse as a child.

Synopsis

Katie Gregory spent her summers growing up at her family’s cabin on a lake in southern New York. Most of those years, she invited her friend Lulu Henderson to stay with her. Together, the girls experienced growing up and all the essential summer milestones that came along with becoming a teenager. They skinny dipped, snuck alcohol and cigarettes, and kissed boys. Though they lived apart during the school year, each summer the girls grew closer to one another, and remained best friends.

Until Lulu casually mentioned to a teacher about having been sexually active with Katie’s father one night at the cabin. Unable to believe her father would do this, Katie rebukes her best friend. Even after her father’s conviction, Katie stands by his side and the perfect memories of those summers at the lake.

The Forgotten Hours bounces back and forth between the “perfect” summers at the beach, and the present- seemingly perfect, except for her father serving time for sexual assault. As Katie prepares for her father’s release from prison, memories from the countless summers slowly creep back into her mind. The memories she had seen so clearly before are suddenly different. She begins to question the testimonies she heard. And as she tries to keep her past a secret, her present begins to crumble around her.

Reader Thoughts

I really loved this book! Even with the deep topics, it drew me in and I wanted to know what happened. Katie’s memories are so clear as she recalls those summers, but slowly you start to see the blurred lines and forgotten hours in her memories. I read Part One non-stop, staying up until 2am because I was unable to put it down.

The inner chunk grew slightly redundant as we were given more details from the past without much present to balance it out. But the ending, again, had me sucked in looking for answers. Once Katie’s father is released, she wants to know what happened that night. She knows what she remembers, which doesn’t align with the memories of her former friends’ testimonies. Her father brushes her questions aside, just like he always did when she was a kid. Until finally, he gives her the answer we were waiting for.

The transition between past and present are abrupt, and often times it took a paragraph or two to realize where on the timeline we were reading. It didn’t help that the past was woven between multiple years, from the first year they invited Lulu as young girls, up until the trial as an adult.

There seemed to be a strange emphasis on age differences, and may age differences were highlighted but we were never explained why. We learned the difference between Katie and Lulu, between Katie and Zev, and Katie and David. We were even given the age difference between Katie’s father and Lulu, and even the difference between her father and Zev. The strangest mention was the time difference between her mother’s miscarriage. I kept waiting for some significance in all these numbers, but it never came.

The ending, although unexpected, came too quickly. After deeply unpacking some of the smallest, most minute details of the past, the resolution comes without full explanation. Though the reader receives closure, we still have many questions pertaining to that night at the cabin, and everyone involved. It feels rushed, as though we were built up and the author couldn’t wait to get to the point and solve it. Also, I’m not a fan of post-dated epilogues.

Overall, I gave this book 4 out of 5 stars. It kept me captivated and felt factually accurate, but had some significant plot holes and paid extra details to plot points that held no value to the overall plot.

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