When Marnie Stephens wakes up in a hospital after a traumatic brain injury, the first thing she registers is that the movie Overboard, starring Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, is playing on the television. The coincidence becomes clear when she and her doctors realize, during the course of her first exam after awakening, that Marnie --- like Goldie on-screen --- seems to have developed amnesia. In Marnie's case, that means that she has absolutely no recollection of the past year.

And it appears to have been a pretty eventful year indeed. Marnie last remembers that she was in Los Angeles, preparing to make a cross-country move with her longtime boyfriend, Matt, to Boston, transferring to the East Coast branch of the recruiting firm where she works. In short order, though, she discovers that she's already in Boston, she no longer works for the recruiter…and she and Matt broke up months earlier. 

"Astute readers will predict the plot twist a mile away, but it's no less satisfying for all that --- and certainly no less romantic. They will enjoy discovering Marnie's story as she herself does."

After being discharged, Marnie makes her way to a completely unfamiliar apartment in a neighborhood --- Boston's North End --- that she doesn’t know. She can't access her phone, her bank account, or many other details of her apparently new life. All she has to go on is a box of Boston mementos, the kinds of things that the old Marnie was in the habit of collecting to help commemorate special days, places and occasions. They're meaningless to her now, but maybe if she revisits these locations, she'll start to retrieve those memories. How will she ever navigate this strange and confusing new city?

The answer presents itself in the form of Marnie’s unfailingly kind (and appealingly attractive) neighbor from across the hall of her apartment building. Ben Morgan knows the city well and agrees to accompany her to the bookstores, movie theaters, museums and coffee shops that she visited once before. Marnie also shares with him her most vivid memories, those of the beloved grandmother who raised her before developing dementia. Along the way, Marnie and Ben start to form a connection --- and maybe make some new memories. Marnie's grandma was a big believer in destiny. Perhaps there's something to it after all?

It's no accident that Overboard was playing at the opening of THANK YOU FOR REMEMBERING. After all, amnesia is a far more likely scenario in fiction (and on film) than in real life. But as far-fetched as Marnie's condition might be, it works in Emily Harding’s emotionally resonant novel. Astute readers will predict the plot twist a mile away, but it's no less satisfying for all that --- and certainly no less romantic. They will enjoy discovering Marnie's story as she herself does.