This was the first book I’ve read by Jodi Picoult and when I picked it up the BookCrosser told me that it wasn’t one of her best. She was right, but it wasn’t really awful, either. I really enjoyed the beginning — the Native American cop, Will Flying Horse, just starting a job in Los Angeles, “escaping” from the reservation, and how he discovers Cassie Barrett, a woman who’s lost her memory. That’s the story I would have liked to read. But then it swung onto the backstory of why Cassie lost her memory, and that story and setting wasn’t quite as interesting.

We have the what, and now we need the why. The majority of this book tells the story of how Cassie meets Alex Rivers, an up and coming movie actor and heartthrob du jour (think Orlando Blum), and of how they come to marry and be in a relationship together. It seems like a fairytale kind of thing, but it turns out not to be. That, of course, is how she comes to lose her memory.

As her memory returns, Cassie pieces together what is going on, she asks the policemant to help her, and he brings her back to the reservation until she can sort out her life. Thus begins an equally unlikely relationship, but at least this is seasoned with interesting snippets of life on a Lakota reservation.

I’ll probably give this author another try, because there was a glimmering of promise at the beginning and the end, and it was an early book. But I found myself irritated with the characters and plot in this one, enough that I never really sank down into the story. Oh well.