The Sudden Appearance of Hope: Discussion

The Sudden Appearance of Hope has all the elements of a good book for me. Check out the blurb:

Listen.

All the world forgets me. First my face, then my voice, then the consequences of my deeds.
So listen. Remember me.

My name is Hope Arden, and you won’t know who I am. We’ve met before – a thousand times. But I am the girl the world forgets.

It started when I was sixteen years old. A slow declining, an isolation, one piece at a time.

A father forgetting to drive me to school. A mother setting the table for three, not four. A teacher who forgets to chase my missing homework. A friend who looks straight through me and sees a stranger.

No matter what I do, the words I say, the people I hurt, the crimes I commit – you will never remember who I am.

That makes my life tricky. But it also makes me dangerous . . .

The Sudden Appearance of Hope is the tale of the girl no one remembers. But this gripping story – of love and loss, of hope and despair, of living in the moment and dying to leave a mark – is novel that will stay with you for ever.

Everyone forgets Hope — like literally, forgets her minutes after meeting her which makes life interesting for a thief, but for a human just a wee bit more depressing, because how do you handle not having a relationship with anyone?

So, that right there? Right up my alley. And how does it make her dangerous?

I was all set to dive into this world and started reading… and started getting a headache. There’s a subplot about an app called Perfection, which I thought would probably lead to an interesting commentary about society in general. But there’s also time jumping and a writing style in the first person that’s sort of like a thread of consciousness, which I wouldn’t mind normally, but Hope seems to jump from one topic to the next and a different time… and it’s exhausting trying to keep up.

Everyone has been raving about this, RAVING, and the author wrote The Fifteen Lives of Harry August (who everyone has everyone has been raving about too) and she’s acclaimed and award-winning and I am questioning myself on the one hand, and the other I think about the slog that was reading this and I just can’t.

What should I do? Go back and try again? Have you ever been in this position? What book was it and what did you do?