False Memory by Dean Koontz

Title:  False Memory
Author:  Dean Koontz
Pages:  627
Genre:  Horror / Thriller
Publisher:  Bantam, 1999
Series:  Stand Alone

Synopsis: Martie Rhodes is a young wife, a successful video game designer, and a compassionate woman who takes her agoraphobic friend, Susan, to therapy sessions. Susan is so afraid of leaving her apartment that even these trips to the doctor's office become ordeals for both women—but with each trip a deeper emotional bond forms between them.

Then one morning Martie experiences a sudden and inexplicable fear of her own, a fleeting but disquieting terror of...her own shadow. The episode is over so quickly it leaves her shaken but amused. The amusement is short-lived. For as she is about to check her makeup, she realizes that she is terrified to look in the mirror and confront the reflection of her own face.

As the episodes of this traumatic condition— autophobia—build, the lives of Martie and her husband, Dustin, change drastically. Desperate to discover the reasons for his wife's sudden and seemingly inevitable descent into mental chaos, Dusty takes Martie to the renowned therapist who has been treating Susan, and tries to reconstruct the events of recent months in a frantic search for clues. As he comes closer to the shocking truth, Dusty finds himself afflicted with a condition even more bizarre and fearsome than Martie's.

No fan of Dean Koontz or of classic psychological suspense will want to miss this extraordinary novel of the human mind's capacity to torment— and destroy—itself. In False Memory, Dean Koontz has created a novel that will stay in your memory long after the final page is turned— a story not only of gripping fear but also of the power of love and friendship. Once more Koontz reveals why he has, as People put it, the "power to scare the daylights out of us."

Review:  This is a really long book.  Koontz is usually a quick read, but this one took real effort.  In the end, the effort was worth it.  The subject is mind control.  The bad guy is so completely insane that it's amazing he managed to hide his sickness as well as he did, for as long as he did.

I didn't see the ending coming and I do love being surprised!

I loved this story, but once again I managed to pick a book that took far too long to read.  The year's almost over and I'll never finish some of my challenges.  I guess that's why they're called challenges.  They are absolutely challenging me!

Rating:  10 / 10