The Review
People are calling this the thriller of the summer. I have to admit, I can see where they are coming from. A brilliant premise sets up the foundations for a mystery the reader can’t get out of their head. In a world where you could only remember yesterday, you can’t help but wonder how you would live your life. Yap seamlessly intertwines this dystopian reality with our world, allowing the reader to fully engross themselves within this captivating thriller.

Yap’s characters are strong, with clear motives and beliefs. I am a firm believer that if you have good characters, you have a good story, but Yap goes one step further and gives us great plot as well. Our antagonist is both sympathetic and disagreeable, and her revenge plot is totally believable. I can’t give too much away, but the heart of this tale is in it’s cast. A vile and arrogant author is particularly interesting.

As with all great thrillers, Yesterday has many unexpected twists. The latter end of the novel is chock full of them, but unfortunately this is also where the story falls down. Complex plots inevitably lead to plot holes, and there is one I’m finding difficult to ignore. I can’t say what it is, but if you read the book give me a message and we can discuss it.

If you’re a fan of character -driven drama that keeps you on your toes, this is one for you.

Yesterday is released for sale on 10th August 2017, and you can contact Yap on Twitter.

A really interesting premise around human abilities. Loss of memory can be very varied and I like the idea that if we write things down we can then learn the information and recall as a memory. It's well worth a read.

When I started this book I wasn't sure whether it was for me or not. However I was soon persuaded otherwise. It is a murder mystery with a twist. I like the way it is told by 4 of the characters and the way the story unfolds through their narratives. In this story people are divided into Duos and Monos. Duos retain their memories for 2 days, Monos for only 1 day. In society Duos are considered the superior class. All people keep a diary to record relevant facts each day so they can learn them in order to carry on their lives more easily.This story uses the difference between Duos and Monos to great effect. The author kept me guessing right to the end.

I am sorry to say that this did not work for me at all.

The world building would have to be way better for me to be the tiny bit convinced of this reality and it was not. It was barely scratched, actually, and had many many holes in it. The whole idea of it being the same world, the same time actually as we are living in, only that in perhaps some parallel universe? (it's never even tried to be explained) people only are able to remember either the last day or the last 2 days, hence the division between monos and duos. So everyone has to write everything down on diaries and then study them so the memories can become facts that can be retained. Impressed? I wasn't. And despite it never making much sense, there was also the problem of it never going to work. How would humanity even start in such a scenario before written language?
Oh, and even better, there were snippets, here and there, of how science was working on expanding the memory but...if it's always been like that, then how or why would they even think of it??

To make matters worse, it is all told in different povs, all using first-person, present tense. It adds to a very boring, poor reading. The characters describing their actions as they're being acted is always an embarrassing thing if not done correctly (which it is not here) and imagine it when they have to repeat all the time about their diaries and how they can only remember a bit? It became kind of unnerving pretty quickly.

The only way for me to finish this was by skimming a lot and still I could have the whole picture. A picture that was badly imagined and badly executed. The dialogues are dreadful in real time but having to read them as told in their diaries made me cringe. And I still cannot understand why, at certain points, instead of just using quotation marks when a character is telling how things happened, the author decided for long paragraphs in italics. Distracting and unnecessary.

Mark was such a cliche that I swear I kept imagining him striking his mustache like those villains in silent movies. Everyone sounded like terrible actors in a B movie, actually.

The ending? Oh my... OK, the author wanted a twist, something super surprising. What we got was an implausible end to a completely impossible novel.

I'd like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC I was given in exchange for my honest review.

I really enjoyed the setup of this book - society is divided into monos and duos, who can remember either yesterday, or the two previous days. The fact that this was a thriller, a murder mystery, meant that the nuances of this carefully drawn world were drawn out organically - rather than simply being an exploration of what memory is and how crucial it is to our lives, the details of this alternate universe and how it differs from our own are subtly and skillfully intertwined with the actual plot.

I really very much enjoyed this twisting and turning mystery as we saw detective Hans try to unravel the story of what happened and how the body of a woman ended up in the river Cam, weighed down with stones. Told from four perspectives - detective Hans, victim Sophia, suspect Mark, and his wife Claire - this nuanced and exciting thriller flips seamlessly between perspectives, intertwining narratives subtly, especially since Sophia's perspective is told to us from her diary - as Hans reads it, trying to solve the mystery.

Claire, as a character, was definitely the weakest of the four. A mono married to a duo author with political aspirations, she actually has little depth to her. The blurb paints her as the main character, but although she begins the narrative, I would personally say that it's Hans who holds this whole book together. Claire is something of a background character, both in her personal life as she supports her superior Duo husband in his public appearances, and in the book itself. She plays a vital role, but she's certainly not the star, and casting her as such in the blurb does this book a disservice.

Claire's lack of depth also then undermines one of the big reveals about three-quarters of the way through the book. She's been painted so thinly that it doesn't actually seem in any way credible that she could play such a pivotal role. 

A final twist in the last pages was also something of a disappointment, as it stretched credibility to the very limits - Sophia's motivation was certainly believable, but the twist in the final pages was certainly a little too much for me to accept.

Generally, though, this was an excellently written thriller, with a hugely interesting alternate universe setting. Nods to how things would have played out the same - Tim Berners-Lee and Steve Jobs both get mentions - augment the believability of the world and the ingrained prejudice visible against 'inferior' monos is thoroughly woven throughout the narrative. Sophia and Hans were hugely compelling characters, and Mark stood up well too. Pitching the book as focused on Claire was, I think, a mistake which weakens what it really a very interesting and engaging book, and an excellent debut from an author I will certainly be looking out for in the future.

Four Stars
****

The premise of the mono/duo society was not fully explained and did not work. The plot could have happened without it. The characters were not pleasant and the villain was ridiculously evil. Not for me, sorry.

Does love equal memory? Or does memory equal love?

Felicia Yap's impressive debut is a scintillating psychological thriller with a sci-fi twist. The world of the novel is much like ours, with one huge difference: the major social division between people concerns their memory status. All adults are classed according to whether they can remember only yesterday (Monos) or both yesterday and the day before (Duos). Duos are accorded higher social status, better jobs, generally more admiration and respect; Monos, by contrast, are often viewed as stupid and can only aspire to menial jobs. The prejudices are deeply culturally entrenched; "mixed marriages", while not illegal, are socially frowned upon and regarded as doomed to failure. After all, Monos and Duos are just too different to make it work.

Naturally, this very limited capacity for memory presents challenges for day to day living, and modern technology has helped greatly - innovations by successful Duos such as Steve Jobs and Tim Berners-Lee have had huge benefits, enabling individuals to record everything in their iDiaries, and learn from them "facts" which they are then able to retain. (I admit I'm not sure how this works, although a brief explanation is given - then again, Felicia Yap has a background in biochemistry, and I don't, so I'm not about to argue.) The reason why memory is so limited is touched upon early on (it's something to do with a genetic switch) but not expanded on - it's just the way people are and as far as anyone knows, that's the way they have always been.

The story cleverly weaves together several strands, arising from the discovery in the Cam of a woman's body, quickly identified as forty-three year old Sophia Alyssa Ayling. Successful novelist/aspiring politician Mark Henry Evans (a Duo, of course), his unhappy Mono wife Claire, ambitious DCI Hans Richardson and the elusive Sophia herself all have their role to play. To say more would spoil it. But I will say: there are twists, turns, and the ending is a complete surprise.

This book is destined for huge success. Read it! I can't wait to see what Felicia Yap does next,

Many thanks to the publisher and to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review,

I have a certain fondness for alternate reality stories. At least the ones that find a sweet spot of familiarity and strangeness, which Yap manages well with this murder mystery. The difference we have here is that people basically can't move memories from their short-term memory into their long term memory, so when they go to bed they write in their diary and when they wake up they learn the day before until they can remember these relevant facts. It's a simple angle but works well because it's used to split the world into monos and duos - two social classes derived from how many days they can recall. The similarities are clever too; Apple sell an iDiary for example. Just enough of an anchor to the reality we know to help us understand the differences presented.

That memory issue leads to a big factor of the storyline. When a murder occurs the detective wants to solve the case in one day. The more time passes the more chance the killer will have forgotten.

The narrative jumps around slightly, both in perspective and timing. We see events unfolding through the eyes of four different characters, each telling their story from their own perspective. It's a style that could easily be gimmicky but here it helps keep the mystery alive and the story fresh. Of course part of the mystery also comes from the strange memories that the characters have. They check their diaries for facts, to see what happened everywhere from a couple of days ago to a couple of decades ago. This memory recall allows for some very effective reveals to keep the plot twisting - it gives characters a credibility when something surfaces.

The book is well written. The characters are relatable despite being so different to the world we know. The early chapters flow quickly and easily into each other, although things do slow slightly as the conclusion bubbles to the surface. But, by then you're hooked and it's not as if they struggle, they just don't have quite the same pace they start with.

A clever angle that adds a fresh twist to the genre. Grab a copy and ready your diary - you'll want to remember this one.

Great book! I feel it will bs compared heavily to "Before I Go to Sleep" but I thought the pacing of this story was better. Really kept me guessing. 5 stars!

I was really excited to read this because I had seen it advertised a lot. I thought it was a good debut and an original idea that crossed the crime genre Into sci fi which was current and led some great ideas. However, I was a bit disappointed with the story itself, it left me unsatisfied and bored. However, I hope this book does well as she is a promising talent!!

BETTER than both Gone Girl and Before I Go To Sleep! A thoroughly deserved five stars, this has been one of my favourite books of this year.

In this world, there are two kinds of people, those who can store two days of memories (duos) and one day of memory (monos). To keep track of their lives, they maintain daily diaries. When Mark, a Duo, weds Claire, a Mono, they have a happy life until a woman, who turns out to be Mark's mistress, ends up dead. Who can you believe when you can't remember anything? Wickedly clever and inventive

This novel starts with an unusual premise, that people are divided into two categories, Monos who possess a 24-hour memory, and Duos who can remember everything for 48 hours. Rather than class, gender or race, society revolves around the differences between Monos and Duos, with Duos being seen as more intelligent and generally superior to Monos. From this come rules restricting what grades of job a Mono can apply for or aspire to.

People remember 'facts' by writing them in their iDiaries every night before they can forget them. These facts seem to be memorised very easily and that is how people function and understand their lives.

This intriguing fantasy is segued with a thriller plot: Yesterday is a murder mystery. It is also an exploration of memory and how we understand the world, the narratives we tell ourselves, and an examination of love and hate.

So far so fascinating. Yet I am awarding this book only 3 stars because of the way it is written. The narrators of the book are the four main characters, yet I found their voices to be much the same voice (with the exception of one very sweary account). I am of course speaking of my personal taste but I found the writing clunky, and overly laden with adjectives - for example this is what one character says to another:
'The figure was moving about with an ethereal, feline grace that could only be feminine. Yet she was also circling the room in a slightly agitated manner; she resembled a hungry, desperate panther. I squinted; she was clad from head to toe in midnight black. A sinuous sable scarf concealed most of her face.' This sort of overwriting partly spoils the book for me: it slows action, defuses tension and, well, irritates me.

Yet still I awarded the book 3 stars. It is a great story.

So I was very drawn to the concept here: an alternative present where society is divided into those whose memory goes back a single day (Monos) and those who can remember two days (Duos) but I'm afraid I really disliked the style of writing. It was, in my opinion, desperately over-written where it seemed to take pages and pages, even whole chapters, to thoroughly flog various dead horses. Yes, I get it. You want revenge. Do we need a fifteenth chapter devoted to you announcing it? Plus some of the language just wasn't my sort of thing. 'Silence coated my lips'. What's wrong with just not speaking? Of course some people won't mind flowery prose and if not, the twists aplenty in this murder mystery might be enough to sustain their interest.