Book Review: Yesterday by Felicia Yap

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Want to know if Yesterday by Felicia Yap is worth the read? Here’s my full review to help you decide.

Yesterday Book Info

Author: Felicia Yap

Published: 1 August 2017

Publisher: Mulholland Books

Rating: 3/5

Where to buy Yesterday by Felicia Yap

Amazon | Book Depository | Kinokuniya

Yesterday Synopsis

How do you solve a murder when you only remember yesterday?

Imagine a world in which classes are divided not by wealth or religion but by how much each group can remember. Monos, the majority, have only one day’s worth of memory; elite Duos have two. In this stratified society, where Monos are excluded from holding high office and demanding jobs, Claire and Mark are a rare mixed marriage. Clare is a conscientious Mono housewife, Mark a novelist-turned-politician Duo on the rise. They are a shining example of a new vision of tolerance and equality—until…

…a beautiful woman is found dead, her body dumped in England’s River Cam. The woman is Mark’s mistress, and he is the prime suspect in her murder. The detective investigating the case has secrets of his own. So did the victim. And when both the investigator’s and the suspect’s memories are constantly erased—how can anyone learn the truth?

Yesterday Book Review

Yesterday by Felicia Yap is a book I have been eyeing for quite awhile especially after knowing that she is also a fellow Malaysian.

Once the opportunity came up for me to purchase the book, I snapped the book up from my local book store, Popular, and started reading.

The premise of the book is very intriguing as the world it is set in divides its citizens by how much they remember; Monos and Duos.

I was interested in how the author would weave in this aspect into the story and how it would affect everything especially the worldbuilding of the book.

Unfortunately for me, the author didn’t get into the nitty gritty details of how this memory restriction would affect the world it is set in. The author did introduce the iDiary into this world where both Monos and Duos can journal their day so as to remind themselves what had happened previously.

Do I think the iDiary is impractical? Yes, yes I do but hey I was fully willing to follow the flow of this story until the end.

I was more interested in how with your memory being restricted to only one to two days, how would the world function? How would the government function? Are we supposed to have a daily meeting to remind everybody of everything. Wouldn’t that jeopardise efficiency?

Such questions didn’t mater though as the author was smart enough to restrict the story to a small scale whereby it wouldn’t affect the plot progression whatsoever.

The plot for, Yesterday by Felicia Yap, is a quite straightforward in a sense. A woman was found dead and the suspect is her married lover. With time racing out, can the detectives figure out the the truth?

Personally, the plot in the first half of the book was okay but as we got closer to the ending I felt like the plot went haywire and became very messy.

Messy to a point that when the plot twist was revealed I was still confused as to what was going on and who was who and who did what and why did it all matter.

In terms of the writing, there were some aspects that I didn’t like personally especially the prologue. How it was written and how the antagonist of the story revealed their plans felt very cartoonish for me and this took me out of the zone in wanting to take this book seriously.

Like come on lah, why is the antagonist revealing her plan like Dr. Doofenshmirtz. The other thing that really bothered me was the execution of the ending.

I felt like something was off and the ending was too rushed and wasn’t cohesive with the rest of the story. It sounds great, the ending, but when you read it, there’s just too many things going on making the impact less effective.

In terms of characters, I quite liked them as each character felt very individualistic and distinct and considering the book is split to multiple POV’s this is makes it easier for the readers to identify who is who. Also, having the name of the characters stated at the start of each chapter does help a lot as well.

Overall, I appreciate the authors ingenuity to think of a novel where the main crux was over memory restrictions. Unfortunately though, Yesterday by Felicia Yap, didn’t meet the expectations I had for it.

If you like this review, here are other reviews to enjoy

• Book Review: The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
• Book Review: The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley
• Book Review: A Trace of Death by Blake Pierce