Synopsis
What do you do when someone takes advantage of your greatest weakness?
When Laura wakes up after her office Christmas party and sees a man’s shirt on the floor, she is horrified. But this is no ordinary one-night-stand regret.
Laura suffers from severe face-blindness, a condition that means she is completely unable to identify and remember faces. So the man she spent all night dancing with and kissing – the man she’d brought home – was “Pink Shirt”.
But the shirt on her floor is blue.
And now Laura must go to work every day, and face the man who took advantage of her condition. The man she has no way of recognizing.
She doesn’t know who he is… but she’s going to make him pay.
‘…so I got out and sat down on a towel next to Mum and Dad.’ … ‘Anyway, it wasn’t until Dad started speaking in French that I realized they weren’t my family.
My thoughts: What an interesting concept. I had never heard of a condition called prosopagnosia or simply known as face blindness, which in essence is an inability to recognize faces. Many people with prosopagnosia aren’t able to recognise family members, partners or friends. They may cope by using alternative strategies to recognise people, such as remembering the way they walk, or their hairstyle, voice or clothing. But these types of compensation strategies don’t always work, particularly when a person with prosopagnosia meets someone out of context, at a place or time they’re not used to seeing that person. (Source: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/face-blindness/) It affects around two in every 100 people in the UK.
I really had no idea what to expect when I started this. The beginning of the book was perhaps a little slow, but necessary to build up to the grand finale at the end.
28 year-old Laura had been struggling with face blindness all her life. After being pressured into attending the office Christmas party by her manager and even though she hated socializing she decided to enjoy herself. She spent the evening drinking, dancing and making out with the cute guy in a pink shirt who she ended up taking back to her house.
When she woke up in the morning she was terrified to discover that the shirt on the floor was blue. Who was he?! Who did she bring to her house and spent the night with? He was definitely not the man she spent her evening dancing with! And she was determined to find him and make him pay.
I was, at times, very frustrated by Laura’s actions! I mean she definitely didn’t make her life any easier by keeping the condition a huge secret from everyone except her family and manager. However, I get why she would’ve been scared about people using it against her in a malicious way. What would you have done in her shoes?
When I Find You opens a door to a discussion on the issue of sexual consent. Was it rape?
Imagine waking up to discover the man lying beside you is not the man you thought you invited into your bed last night.
Second half of the book had me absolutely transfixed! Lets just say that S*it got real!
The narrative alternates between Laura and Rebecca, her manager. Rebecca’s story is a web of deceit in itself.
When I find you essentially raises a question on moral dilemma; it is full of lies and trickery, hair-raising moments and a twist that I truly did not see coming. (And I was convinced that I had worked it all out! Nope, I really hadn’t.)
A thrilling whodunnit with an original plot.
4.5 out of 5 stars – I will be keeping my eye out for her other books for sure (Boyfriend, if you are reading this- see below my Christmas wish-list! lol x)
Kat x
Other books by Emma Curtis: One Little Mistake (2017) and The Night You Left (2019, available to pre-order)
