#Review - Narcosis Room by Louise Cypress #YA #Contemporary

Series: Standalone
Format: Kindle, 282 pages
Release Date: February 19th 2019
Publisher: Owl Hollow Press
Source: Publisher intermediary
Genre: Young Adult

Total Recall meets Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies.

Sleep for three months and make your problems go away.

Ellie Savage is used to promises. Her dermatologist dad and her psychiatrist mom run the Narcosis Clinic, a medical facility famous for ultimate makeovers, where disturbing issues are resolved while patients are beautified. Clients like pop star Dean Mathews are grateful to narcosis for healing their deepest wounds. Ellie is her parents’ most ardent supporter until her dreams become a nightmare. Ellie discovers that her true self has been shredded to bits by the scalpel and the only way for Ellie to remember is to forget everything she thinks she knows.

 

“Sleep for three months and make your problems go away. At the Narcosis Clinic, dreams really do come true.”

Author Louise Cypress's Narcosis Room is a mixture of mystery, suspense, and science fiction. Call it Total Recall meets Uglies if you like. This is a story that focuses on several characters like Ellie Savage, Owen, Dean Mathews, and Cole before reverting to mostly Ellie in the final sequence. The idea that you can sleep away treatments and trauma while someone basically fixes and reprograms your brain and body almost like an unconscious miracle cure that doesn't impact harshly on the patients overall well being and state of mind: well It really does sound too good to be true, doesn't it?

 

Ellie Savage is used to promises. Her dermatologist dad and her psychiatrist mom run the Narcosis Clinic, a medical facility famous for ultimate makeovers, where disturbing issues are resolved while patients are beautified. Ellie is her parents’ most ardent supporter until her dreams become a nightmare. Ellie discovers that her true self has been shredded to bits by the scalpel and the only way for Ellie to remember is to forget everything she thinks she knows. Even though her parents claim she has retrograde amnesia, there's just something damning about what happened to her and why.

 

Clients like pop star Dean Mathews are grateful to narcosis for healing their deepest wounds and to fix his stuttering that happened after his best friend left with his girlfriend. A chance encounter with Dean at a party leads Ellie to begin to question what is exactly happening to her during her therapy. Especially when she somehow finds a way to save Dean's life after he falls into a pool. Dean is a cool cat, and I am glad that he found Marley, and didn't get caught up in the past that could have ruined his career.

 

Cole is a boy who fell for Ellie, but ever since Ellie came back from boarding school, she's different, and has forgotten who her friends are including his sister Marley who was Ellie's best friend. One of the biggest mysteries in this story is why did Ellie's parents not do enough to protect her? How could they allow themselves to be put into a situation where Ellie is almost a Shepard Wife because of her past desire to have fun? When you stymie your own child, and make her into something entirely different, there should be penalties involved in making sure you don't do anything like this ever again.

 

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