This book had a lot of twists and turns, which definitely made for a great read. This is a very well written book.
When I Was You
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars | 38,003 ratings
Price: 17.5
Last update: 08-13-2024
About this item
A stolen identity leads a woman down a dark and desperate path in a gripping novel of psychological suspense by Wall Street Journal bestselling author Minka Kent.
After barely surviving a brutal attack, Brienne Dougray rarely leaves her house. Suffering from debilitating headaches and memory loss, she can rely only on her compassionate new tenant, Dr. Niall Emberlin, a welcome distraction from the discomfiting bubble that has become her existence.
But Brienne’s growing confidence in her new routine is shaken when she stumbles across unsettling evidence that someone else is living as...her. Same name. Same car. Same hair. Same clothes. She’s even friended her family on social media. To find out why, Brienne must leave the safety of her home to hunt a familiar stranger.
What she discovers is more disturbing than she could have ever imagined. With her fragile mind close to shattering, Brienne is prepared to do anything to reclaim her life. If it’s even hers to reclaim.
Top reviews from the United States
jacksprat125.0 out of 5 stars
Great Thriller
Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2024
Cynema4.0 out of 5 stars
A MIND-BOGGLING MINDBLOWER!
Reviewed in the United States on January 3, 2020
An impostor story that blew my mind! What a crazy ride this mesmerizing suspense thriller was in tackling an extreme case of identity theft, and the thrill ride left me breathless with excitement. I kept asking myself what the heck is going on here? The “impostor” twist gets taken to a new level, with chilling ironies. The story was clever, unsettling, and proved once again that the author (a pseudonym of Winter Renshaw) continues to have more thriller tricks up her sleeve. On edge for most of it, I was delightfully sucked into every fresh angle and crazy dip that took the story in wild and unexpected directions. The twists and turns never stopped, as I frantically whipped through the pages for answers. POVs and revelations kept shifting and left me constantly off-kilter. The slow wind-up followed by the unwind of an inventive plot was deliciously devious and complex, and everything spiraled in faster and faster free-fall to conclusion.
“It never fails to amaze me all the things people do when they think no one’s watching, the things they think they can get away with”
An assault left Brienne Dougray with severe headaches, memory loss and blackouts. Fear of her still-at-large assailant has made her a recluse in her monstrous home. Her friends ghosted her as a literal pariah after the incident, though she has no idea why. Worse, there’s a lookalike woman in town openly living as Brienne, and using her name. But, who is the real Brienne and why are false memories more real than the supposedly true ones she can’t remember? No one – not even the police – seems to take her claims of an impostor seriously, nor are they doing much to find her attacker. Instead, she is treated like a stalker. If not for her recent boarder – Dr. Niall Emberlin – lonely Brienne would lose her mind. But, she doesn’t even know the worst of it … yet.
This noirish thriller had me off-balance in all the best ways. The beginning strikes just the right unsettling chord of introducing Brienne and her situation, never giving us the full picture, while teasing us with tidbits that slowly help unravel this mind boggling mystery. What is truth, and which, if any, characters are reliable? I’m always a sucker for the unreliable narrator angle, but don’t think you have all, or any, of the details of this puzzler figured out because the imaginative story keeps shifting focus and revelations at a snappy pace.
The multiple POVs were deliciously manipulative. And once the answers start flowing, I had to pick my jaw up off the ground because I never imagined the story would be so intricate in motivation and detail. While I was busy screaming in my head at the actions (and sometimes foolish mistakes) of characters, I was still enormously entertained by how ingeniously crafted the story was. There was a very noticeable flaw in logic in a scene/dialogue that I can’t mention without giving too much away, but that mistake wasn’t enough to spoil the story for me in any way. The plot starts getting real and gritty once distractions occur, and over-confidence leads to sloppy, mushrooming mistakes and possible exposure of the truth.
The concept is brilliant, and the plotting insanely clever, along with my love for the author’s writing style. Just let yourself go and accept the logic and dynamics of this generally satisfying thriller. It wasn’t perfect, but it was extremely entertaining and I can’t even say a thing about the most riveting character that blew me away the most!
“When I was you, I learned about the person I was, the person I wanted to be, and the person I didn’t want to be anymore. And after meeting you today, I learned about the person I hope to become more like someday”
“It never fails to amaze me all the things people do when they think no one’s watching, the things they think they can get away with”
An assault left Brienne Dougray with severe headaches, memory loss and blackouts. Fear of her still-at-large assailant has made her a recluse in her monstrous home. Her friends ghosted her as a literal pariah after the incident, though she has no idea why. Worse, there’s a lookalike woman in town openly living as Brienne, and using her name. But, who is the real Brienne and why are false memories more real than the supposedly true ones she can’t remember? No one – not even the police – seems to take her claims of an impostor seriously, nor are they doing much to find her attacker. Instead, she is treated like a stalker. If not for her recent boarder – Dr. Niall Emberlin – lonely Brienne would lose her mind. But, she doesn’t even know the worst of it … yet.
This noirish thriller had me off-balance in all the best ways. The beginning strikes just the right unsettling chord of introducing Brienne and her situation, never giving us the full picture, while teasing us with tidbits that slowly help unravel this mind boggling mystery. What is truth, and which, if any, characters are reliable? I’m always a sucker for the unreliable narrator angle, but don’t think you have all, or any, of the details of this puzzler figured out because the imaginative story keeps shifting focus and revelations at a snappy pace.
The multiple POVs were deliciously manipulative. And once the answers start flowing, I had to pick my jaw up off the ground because I never imagined the story would be so intricate in motivation and detail. While I was busy screaming in my head at the actions (and sometimes foolish mistakes) of characters, I was still enormously entertained by how ingeniously crafted the story was. There was a very noticeable flaw in logic in a scene/dialogue that I can’t mention without giving too much away, but that mistake wasn’t enough to spoil the story for me in any way. The plot starts getting real and gritty once distractions occur, and over-confidence leads to sloppy, mushrooming mistakes and possible exposure of the truth.
The concept is brilliant, and the plotting insanely clever, along with my love for the author’s writing style. Just let yourself go and accept the logic and dynamics of this generally satisfying thriller. It wasn’t perfect, but it was extremely entertaining and I can’t even say a thing about the most riveting character that blew me away the most!
“When I was you, I learned about the person I was, the person I wanted to be, and the person I didn’t want to be anymore. And after meeting you today, I learned about the person I hope to become more like someday”
Frances5.0 out of 5 stars
A real spellbinder
Reviewed in the United States on August 4, 2024
Fast paced, nail biting psychological thriller that kept me up all night. Great story, well written. Highly recommend this book!
AA3.0 out of 5 stars
Does its job
Reviewed in the United States on January 3, 2022
Brienne Dougray was attacked and left for dead. During her recovery, she suffers from the trauma of that incident, debilitating migraines, and plenty of uncertainty in her memory both before and after her assault. Something obviously happened, her friends have stopped talking to her and she has no one in her life other than the doctor Niall Emberlin who is the new tenant in her house and the only person there for her. But when she notices someone else in the area with the same everything, including name, between her fear of being disbelieved and her need for some sort of justice, she goes to solve this problem herself. Who is pretending to be her?
As a thriller, there are lots of spoilers and I will do my best to tag them all.
My general thoughts: as a thriller, I feel like this book does its job. Its first part creeps up, giving you all of this information and trying to make you as confused as Brienne. I'll admit, I had the first twist locked down. I did not have the second twist, or the third, from the second part on there was hardly any room to consider what was going on other than the plot at hand. The writing, first person present, was actually done well. Brienne isn't the only POV character we get to see and you can tell the difference between them even if you didn't look at the name at the top of the chapter when the POV shifted.
Brienne is obscenely wealthy, which does bring me some questions. I can understand that she apparently lived her life without really getting too much into it, that's fine. But even in regards to her first assault - events that happened before the first page of the book - you would think that with that much money she would still have people looking into things. Even if her viewpoint, jaded after her attack, tells her that people would only be doing it to get her money. But when she finds someone living as her, she gives up immediately. Considering her own physical condition and her fear of putting herself out there to search that is suggested at the very first of the book, it doesn't make much sense. But she has trauma and obviously is triggered by being said to be insane, so I can excuse it.
Getting into the nitty gritty here (I will still try not to say anything specific, but I will still say spoilers for generalizations). There are many things I had to ignore in order to go along with the story. I'll admit, it wasn't actually too hard to ignore most of these problems and just enjoy the ride. Mainly to see the antagonist do their thing, wondering what the plan was and how they might possibly get their comeuppance. Yet there were several things I had a hard time swallowing.
At the very top of this was how Brienne ended up all alone at the beginning of the book. I must say, her friends aren't really very good friends. Especially as they left her after her assault. Certainly it is hard to be around someone suffering at times, especially when it affects their mind and personality. They obviously thought that was what was going on as well. And they didn't even try, or speak to her face to face. They ghosted their nearly killed and psychologically tortured friend. Even if there wasn't the mystery of the book, and a double of Brienne, that doesn't really seem to be the action of close friends. Brienne is recovering from some harsh things, while currently being subjected to others, so I'm not willing to blame her for not trying sooner to speak with her friends. But her friends sure don't give me the comfort the memory of their past together gives Brienne.
Second is how the implication of the mental illness given in this book is handled. I am perfectly fine with both POV characters' interpretation of it. Neither of them are true medical professionals, neither of them are knowledgeable psychiatrists. People are tricked into thinking things of different mental conditions all the time. But a character in this book is an expert in DID. I know nothing ever goes exactly as textbook cases, but considering how actually hard it is to get a real diagnosis in real life when you actually have a problem, it seems so unlikely that an institution would accept someone without the proper documentation, without diagnosing the person themselves, something. If someone in the institution was being paid off, that would have been another matter.
Third, Brienne's double. (Super spoilers here, even if I'm still trying to be unspecific.) She didn't know what was going on. That alone is what actually breaks the story for me. If she actually knew what she was doing, instead of being manipulated into it, that would be one thing. And she wasn't brought in because of her physical similarities to Brienne. She was just there to be involved and... happened to look exactly like her when given a slight makeover? That makes the least amount of sense as anything. She is said to have the same taste in music, which couldn't possibly be tailored and therefore was just a coincidence. Fortunately this revelation came far enough in that I was still curious enough about how the story would end, because if it had happened sooner I might have put the book down and come back to it later. I half expected to learn that they were related in one way or another, to at least make sense of that. Which would have been more convoluted in an already convoluted plot, but could have been written in a way to work it together to at least keep this issue from feeling as egregious as it did to me.
And (the most specific spoiler and my most infuriating part in the entire story), when you have your friend back on your side, want to confront your antagonist, and they let you go on your own? Not even call the cops after you? Not a good friend. Again, and perhaps even specifically for this end scene alone, Brienne's friends are the weakest part of the story, bar nothing.(End of spoilers!)Despite my problems with it, I did enjoy the book. It was a fun read and went by fast. I liked reading from both POVs, liked calling them both out on things, while understanding why they still did what they did, liked some of the coincidences and the rather clumsy sleuthing. It's not perfect in any stretch, but a thriller that is exciting? This book does deliver that.
I give this book a 3 out of 5, a good book that someone less picky than me would likely find amazing, but that I personally am happy to have spent a few hours with to have read. Read if you want to have a thrill, but not if you are looking for a mystery to pull apart. Very different genres that I am learning to judge differently.
As a thriller, there are lots of spoilers and I will do my best to tag them all.
My general thoughts: as a thriller, I feel like this book does its job. Its first part creeps up, giving you all of this information and trying to make you as confused as Brienne. I'll admit, I had the first twist locked down. I did not have the second twist, or the third, from the second part on there was hardly any room to consider what was going on other than the plot at hand. The writing, first person present, was actually done well. Brienne isn't the only POV character we get to see and you can tell the difference between them even if you didn't look at the name at the top of the chapter when the POV shifted.
Brienne is obscenely wealthy, which does bring me some questions. I can understand that she apparently lived her life without really getting too much into it, that's fine. But even in regards to her first assault - events that happened before the first page of the book - you would think that with that much money she would still have people looking into things. Even if her viewpoint, jaded after her attack, tells her that people would only be doing it to get her money. But when she finds someone living as her, she gives up immediately. Considering her own physical condition and her fear of putting herself out there to search that is suggested at the very first of the book, it doesn't make much sense. But she has trauma and obviously is triggered by being said to be insane, so I can excuse it.
Getting into the nitty gritty here (I will still try not to say anything specific, but I will still say spoilers for generalizations). There are many things I had to ignore in order to go along with the story. I'll admit, it wasn't actually too hard to ignore most of these problems and just enjoy the ride. Mainly to see the antagonist do their thing, wondering what the plan was and how they might possibly get their comeuppance. Yet there were several things I had a hard time swallowing.
At the very top of this was how Brienne ended up all alone at the beginning of the book. I must say, her friends aren't really very good friends. Especially as they left her after her assault. Certainly it is hard to be around someone suffering at times, especially when it affects their mind and personality. They obviously thought that was what was going on as well. And they didn't even try, or speak to her face to face. They ghosted their nearly killed and psychologically tortured friend. Even if there wasn't the mystery of the book, and a double of Brienne, that doesn't really seem to be the action of close friends. Brienne is recovering from some harsh things, while currently being subjected to others, so I'm not willing to blame her for not trying sooner to speak with her friends. But her friends sure don't give me the comfort the memory of their past together gives Brienne.
Second is how the implication of the mental illness given in this book is handled. I am perfectly fine with both POV characters' interpretation of it. Neither of them are true medical professionals, neither of them are knowledgeable psychiatrists. People are tricked into thinking things of different mental conditions all the time. But a character in this book is an expert in DID. I know nothing ever goes exactly as textbook cases, but considering how actually hard it is to get a real diagnosis in real life when you actually have a problem, it seems so unlikely that an institution would accept someone without the proper documentation, without diagnosing the person themselves, something. If someone in the institution was being paid off, that would have been another matter.
Third, Brienne's double. (Super spoilers here, even if I'm still trying to be unspecific.) She didn't know what was going on. That alone is what actually breaks the story for me. If she actually knew what she was doing, instead of being manipulated into it, that would be one thing. And she wasn't brought in because of her physical similarities to Brienne. She was just there to be involved and... happened to look exactly like her when given a slight makeover? That makes the least amount of sense as anything. She is said to have the same taste in music, which couldn't possibly be tailored and therefore was just a coincidence. Fortunately this revelation came far enough in that I was still curious enough about how the story would end, because if it had happened sooner I might have put the book down and come back to it later. I half expected to learn that they were related in one way or another, to at least make sense of that. Which would have been more convoluted in an already convoluted plot, but could have been written in a way to work it together to at least keep this issue from feeling as egregious as it did to me.
And (the most specific spoiler and my most infuriating part in the entire story), when you have your friend back on your side, want to confront your antagonist, and they let you go on your own? Not even call the cops after you? Not a good friend. Again, and perhaps even specifically for this end scene alone, Brienne's friends are the weakest part of the story, bar nothing.(End of spoilers!)Despite my problems with it, I did enjoy the book. It was a fun read and went by fast. I liked reading from both POVs, liked calling them both out on things, while understanding why they still did what they did, liked some of the coincidences and the rather clumsy sleuthing. It's not perfect in any stretch, but a thriller that is exciting? This book does deliver that.
I give this book a 3 out of 5, a good book that someone less picky than me would likely find amazing, but that I personally am happy to have spent a few hours with to have read. Read if you want to have a thrill, but not if you are looking for a mystery to pull apart. Very different genres that I am learning to judge differently.
GC4.0 out of 5 stars
Riveting
Reviewed in the United States on March 16, 2024
The story was compelling, slowly building until finally hurtling to a swift conclusion.
At times, it seemed entirely implausible, but the roller coaster ride was entertaining.
The target audience, in my estimation, is women over 35.
At times, it seemed entirely implausible, but the roller coaster ride was entertaining.
The target audience, in my estimation, is women over 35.
L. Vázquez Ratcliffe5.0 out of 5 stars
I kept thinking I had it figured out and then a twist!
Reviewed in the United States on July 29, 2024
I kept thinking I had it figured out and then a twist! It kept me guessing and intrigued. Definitely recommend.
Debbie Clark4.0 out of 5 stars
Intriguing
Reviewed in the United States on May 5, 2024
The book When I was you was intriguing and interesting. I did get bogged down in the middle of the book, but it picked up again at the end.
BebeBD5.0 out of 5 stars
I did not see that coming!!
Reviewed in the United States on August 30, 2023
I loved this thriller!! The character development and story line were amazing. I loved how it kept me in suspense pretty much from beginning to end. And of course, cheers for the intricacies woven throughout.
The oh no's and the oh HECK NO!! from part 1 to part 2 will always be in my memory when I reflect on this book. Great job!!
I recommend if you want a fast paced read that has well thought out details, puzzle pieced throughout that all come together at the end; and something that will keep you reading as fast as possible to find out how it all comes to an end. Read in just over 24 hours, but the story won't leave me anytime soon!
The oh no's and the oh HECK NO!! from part 1 to part 2 will always be in my memory when I reflect on this book. Great job!!
I recommend if you want a fast paced read that has well thought out details, puzzle pieced throughout that all come together at the end; and something that will keep you reading as fast as possible to find out how it all comes to an end. Read in just over 24 hours, but the story won't leave me anytime soon!