Black Out by Lisa Unger. Publisher: Shaye Areheart Books (Crown Publishing), May 2008
When my mother named me Ophelia, she thought she was being literary. She didn’t realize she was being tragic.
On the surface, Annie Powers’s life in a wealthy Floridian suburb is happy and idyllic. Her husband, Gray, loves her fiercely; together, they dote on their beautiful young daughter, Victory. But the bubble surrounding Annie is pricked when she senses that the demons of her past have resurfaced and, to her horror, are now creeping up on her. These are demons she can’t fully recall because of a highly dissociative state that allowed her to forget the tragic and violent episodes of her earlier life as Ophelia March and to start over, under the loving and protective eye of Gray, as Annie Powers. Disturbing events—the appearance of a familiar dark figure on the beach, the mysterious murder of her psychologist—trigger strange and confusing memories for Annie, who realizes she has to quickly piece them together before her past comes to claim her future and her daughter.
In this intense psychological thriller, Annie Powers, a wife and mother with a past that seems to be creeping back into her future. Annie didn’t know who to trust, her husband, her doctor, her in-laws or her friends. The only person she completely trust is her daughter and she was going to do anything in her powers to make sure her daughter is safe and happy. This book had twists and turns that I didn’t know what was real or fantasy. An excellent page-turner that I couldn’t put down until the last punctuation mark.