Thanks to SoHo Crime publishers and Edelweiss-AboveTheTreeline for [b: What My Body Remembers|31544900|What My Body Remembers|Agnete Friis|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1478732053s/31544900.jpg|52223981] by [a: Agnete Friis|3398035|Agnete Friis|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1320909596p2/3398035.jpg]. I received an ARC Kindle e-book edition at no cost.

There are people in our world who have never experienced nightmares that come to life.

Post-Traumatic Stress has become a buzz-phrase in society, that makes it seem a fad rather than a disease or ailment. Only recently people outside of War experience were diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disease.

Unlike a broken bone or paralysis, PTSD is a psychological manifestation of tragic or traumatic experiences. The effects are felt by a sufferer in different ways.

There is little acknowledgment or treatment for deep trauma. Many sufferers end up self-medicating with alcohol and/or drugs.

It is easy to judge others when we cannot see the deep poisonous pains that handicap their lives.

This novel is about a remarkable woman; Ella Nygaard of Denmark. For twenty years she has done the best she can to keep some kind of life balance and provide a life for her adolescent son.

The only family she knows or claims is her son. Every day is a struggle to keep enough balance to keep her son and a way to provide for them.

At the age of seven Ella experienced a grisly nightmare which claimed the life of her mother. Her father went to prison. She cannot remember any of it.

Ella experiences physical ailments called tremors when she dreams. Some of the memories start to come through and her body cannot take it. But science will not brand what she experiences as a disability. Their lives remain cataclysmic.

Her only friends are also broken. Sober alcoholics who care about Ella and her son Alex.

A series of events takes Ella back to the physical place where the nightmare began.

Will this be the end of it all? Will Ella and Alex be able to stay together?

Can there be any possible redemption or resolution?

I will recommend this haunting novel for our library collection, and to other readers I know. ( )

I'd probably have given it 2-3 stars if it were a more popular book but it wasn't bad-- I predicted the ending pretty early on and I hated pretty much all of the characters so there wasn't a lot to latch onto, and a few things were confusing but overall it was well-written and interesting and the plot twists were well placed. ( )

Ella Nygaard lives with her son, but cannot work because of her medical condition. She is estranged from her family as her father went to prison for the killing of her mother. Following a minor altercation, Ella grabs her son from a relation and heads out of the city to her grandmother's abandoned home on the coast, where they try to establish new lives. The book goes back and forth between the present and the events leading up to her mother's death until we understand what actually occurred. I like the series about Nina Borg that Friis co-writes with Lene Kaaberbol, but found this solo effort rather flat. ( )

This book was unpleasant to read and didn't reward the reader with interesting characters or an engaging plot. I understand that had difficult lives that toughened them up, or something, but it was difficult to connect with them when they were so one-dimensional, and that one dimension was aggressively rude. ( )

Such a bleak book. So well written. I really don't want to rate this. It was hard for me to read.