Am I Olive?

Janes #1.5

by Elizabeth Elle Mitchell

After a devastating car accident, Olive finds herself trapped in a life she doesn’t remember with a man she’s not sure she can trust. He’s acting like a doting husband, but as Olive’s memories start to resurface, she worries their seemingly perfect marriage is built on lies.

The harder she tries to reconstruct the past, the more Olive feels herself slipping away, until she’s forced to decide between the woman she used to be and the woman she’s becoming.

ebook

First published September 1, 2022

About the author

Elizabeth Mitchell is a disabled author, multidisciplinary artist, and publisher who's lived many lives. Her work challenges, blends genres, explores haunted bodies, and delves into the human psyche. She's a social activist, a gamer with potato aim, and an avid reader. As a woman with several invisible illnesses, she enjoys living a semi-horizontal life with her husband and spoiled furbutts in the PNW. Her writing is also under Elle. Find her at https://www.justanotherelizabeth.com/.

Reviews

[Cheyenne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unfortunately, I found this to be the most underwhelming of the Janes books so far (I'm writing this after book 2 came out). The premise presented in the first chapter was fantastic - a woman has completely lost her memory and is now going home with a husband she doesn't remember, except the flashes of memory she is getting show some suspicious conflict between the couple. By the end of the first chapter, I suspected this would be the best Mitchell novel I'd read yet. However, the problem with this book lies in the fact that it is a dual perspective, and the second we hit Chapter 2 and are given the husband's perspective, any mystery regarding the nature of their relationship disappears. If this book had stayed in the wife's perspective, it would have drawn me in more, as a mystery would be unfurling and there would be twists throughout. Instead, the big secret is given away immediately, and everything else for the rest of the book feels fairly one-dimensional. It was not an unpleasant read, just too simplistic, even given that it is a novella. That said, I still enjoy Mitchell's ideas and would not be opposed to reading more Janes books in the future.