Annie Powers has the perfect life with a wonderful husband,
a beautiful daughter, a lovely house in a wealthy Florida
neighborhood and a past that should forever stay in the
past. But the past doesn't always stay where it should.
Annie had a lonely childhood, the only child of divorced
parents and a victim to broken promises. When her mother
brought a young man, Marlowe, into their home, Annie (known
as Ophelia, at that time) found herself drawn to him as
much as she loathed him. Before long, circumstances flew
out of control as her stepfather was killed before her eyes
and their house set on fire. Ophelia (Annie) escaped with
Marlowe, leaving a trail of murders behind them. By this
time, she'd retreated within herself and reality was a thin
veil before her eyes. She then became pregnant with
Marlowe's child.
Ophelia's father finally found the strength to get involved
and hired Gray Powers to track down Ophelia and rescue her
from Marlowe. After a long stay in rehab, Ophelia "died"
and Annie Powers was born. Gray fell in love with the
sensitive young woman and gave her the opportunity of a
lifetime -- a new identity.
Annie has now lived five wonderful years with Gray, albeit
experiencing a few episodes of backsliding into the fog of
the past. She sees a therapist regularly, takes medicine
for debilitating migraines, and her daughter is her life.
Then one day, she feels someone's eyes on her and knows
someone is watching her. Gray tries to convince her that
she's overly tired and all is well, but Annie knows better.
A walk on the beach finds someone following her, leaving
Annie more convinced than ever that Marlowe has come back
to find her, keeping his promise that she will always be
his. In order to keep her daughter's parentage a secret,
Annie must flee and assume a third identity, leaving her
daughter with Gray.
And this is where I leave you in this review. BLACK OUT by
Lisa Unger is a fantastic story, the plot complex in
a mind-boggling yet stimulating page-turning way. I'd love
the opportunity to sit down with people who've read Unger's
book to contemplate the plot and the terrifying thought of
what might happen if this were a true story. This book is
chilling, powerful, and it's incomprehensible to me that
there would be people alive who might do the things that
happen to Annie and justify their behavior for the good of
the person. Do you love thrillers? Should you read this
book? Oh yes, I say.
When my mother named me Ophelia, she thought she was being
literary. She didn’t realize she was being tragic.
On the surface, Annie Powers’s life in a wealthy Floridian
suburb is happy and idyllic. Her husband, Gray, loves her
fiercely; together, they dote on their beautiful young
daughter, Victory. But the bubble surrounding Annie is
pricked when she senses that the demons of her past have
resurfaced and, to her horror, are now creeping up on her.
These are demons she can’t fully recall because of a
highly dissociative state that allowed her to forget the
tragic and violent episodes of her earlier life as Ophelia
March and to start over, under the loving and protective
eye of Gray, as Annie Powers. Disturbing events—the
appearance of a familiar dark figure on the beach, the
mysterious murder of her psychologist—trigger strange and
confusing memories for Annie, who realizes she has to
quickly piece them together before her past comes to claim
her future and her daughter.
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