Yesterday

by Felicia Yap

[Leah]

Yesterday has to be one of the most buzzed about thrillers for 2017. The cover has a quote from the Observer saying it’s the thriller of the summer and I’m inclined to agree. (I have also spent more time than is appropriate trying to figure out what the cover actually is and I still have no clue.OH WAIT it’s a diary???) It’s also a pretty unique thriller because the whole concept of the novel is that in this interpretation of the world, people can only remember their memories from yesterday or from yesterday and the day before (monos and duos). And so, when a detective rocks up to Claire’s house accusing her husband Mark of murder, she doesn’t know who to trust or what to believe because, as a mono, she can only remember yesterday.

The whole concept of Yesterday is brilliant. That you can write down what happened in your life, but you won’t really remember the finer details. That if you don’t want to remember a particular aspect of your day, you don’t write it down and it’s gone when you wake up. It’s so simple and so clever. I, of course, had questions. How do police officers do their job correctly? Doctors? How does something become a fact, that you know as soon as you think of it (how Claire remembers when she and Mark met, for example). Yet all these questions are answered and a lot of it comes from the iDiaries people carry around that retains all the information. Obviously the downside to that is that a diary can’t remember what emotions you felt for a particular event, just the words and it’s such a good concept.

Yesterday has short, snappy chapters that really keep you hooked - we meet Claire and Mark who are at the center of everything, Detective Hans who is investigating the murder and then we have the murdered girl Sophia Ayling, or her diary anyway. The characters were difficult to get to know - with limitations on their memories they’re hardly reliable. When all that tells you about your past is something that could entirely be fictional, you have to take every character at a pinch of salt (although I liked Detective Hans). But it’s the plot that really pulls you in - it’s fascinating unravelling Sophia’s life and how it relates to Claire and Mark’s lives as well.

I am MEGA intrigued by that ending, mind. There is a book up for pre-order from Felicia Yap called Today, so I am hoping that it’s a continuation because we are so not done with this story. Yesterday was just so, so intriguing. The plot, the characters, all the different variants to the characters that came to light while reading (some of it pretty intense and scary). And I liked the anchoring figure of Detective Hans. I do hope this is only the start of this fascinating series as Felicia Yap has really hit into a pretty unique twist on the thriller genre (something the thriller genre was gasping for, let’s be real). Felicia Yap is a super talented writer, she really gets under your skin and I really enjoyed Yesterday.