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The Good Parts by Evann Normandin
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Pages: 352
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Buy: Bookshop.org
This post contains spoilers.
Book Blurb
She erased their past. He’s rewriting their future.
When Landon receives a letter from Rose–the woman he once planned forever with–he learns their love story is over. She’s undergone a radical memory-erasing treatment, leaving behind her grief, her past… and him. But Landon can’t bear to lose the love of his life. If she fell for him once, couldn’t she fall for him again?
Now living in Edinburgh, Rose’s world is a blank canvas, and she’s dating someone new. When Landon reenters her life as a stranger, they become fast friends, their lives entwining once more. But what Rose doesn’t know is that this new friend carries the weight of everything they once shared: their firsts, their marriage, and the heartbreak they barely survived. And when she starts exhibiting strange symptoms, it becomes clear their history isn’t gone–it’s just buried. And remembering could come at a devastating cost.
Told in alternating timelines–his from the present, hers from the past–The Good Parts is an achingly poignant story about the people we become across a lifetime, and the beauty of finding our way with what remains.
My Thoughts
I went into The Good Parts thinking I had figured out the terrible event that led Rose to take the forgetting pill, and I was completely wrong. I really enjoyed being slowly led toward the truth through the book’s alternating timeline. Each chapter switches between the present and the past, gradually revealing what happened to Rose and why she would make the drastic decision to erase her memories. That structure worked well for me and kept me wanting to know more.
This is also a book that I think is much more of a tragedy than a romance. In fact, I would not categorize it as romance at all. There is no traditional happily ever after, no third-act breakup followed by reconciliation, and the story does not follow the emotional beats I expect from a romance novel. At its core, this is a story about grief, trauma, memory, motherhood, and two people who have been devastated by the same loss in very different ways.
I felt terrible for both Rose and Landon, but ultimately, I found myself having much more sympathy for Rose. Rose clearly needed help after her pregnancy, but with the childhood trauma she was already carrying, she didn’t seem to know how to ask for it or how to let anyone in.
I also appreciated that the book explored something that is not talked about enough: not every mother immediately feels connected to her child. Considering Rose’s trauma and everything she was experiencing, her struggles felt understandable rather than something that should make her a bad person.
Landon, however, frustrated me a lot. In the present timeline, I found his behavior toxic. He lies to Rose, tracks her down, and refuses to let go of the version of her he believes is the “real” Rose. He repeatedly describes his Rose as two contradictory things at once: gentle and wild, poised and undone, kind and exacting. I loved that description, but it also highlighted how attached he was to the person Rose used to be.
The new Rose isn’t burdened by the trauma and grief that shaped her previous life and that makes her feel like a completely different person. Trauma changes people, so forgetting that trauma would naturally change someone’s personality, too.
I understood what the book was going for when Landon compared this new Rose to a child (she has to rediscover parts of herself and approaches the world with wonder), but some of those comparisons went too far for me. Rose hasn’t literally become a child. She hasn’t forgotten everything she ever learned or become a completely blank slate. Being whimsical, curious, reckless, or happy does not make someone childlike. I do wonder if this was an unconscious comparison between Rose and their daughter, but either way, it got old.
The book absolutely broke my heart when everything surrounding their daughter’s death was revealed. It is incredibly common for couples to struggle after losing a child because both people are drowning in their own grief. Sometimes they simply cannot take care of each other when they are barely surviving themselves, and many relationships do not survive that kind of loss. Rose and Landon’s inability to help each other made sense to me, even though it was devastating to watch.
That said, I had a huge problem with how Landon handled his own grief. He pushes Rose into therapy, which I actually think was the right decision, but he doesn’t seem to believe that he needs help himself. This is a man who witnessed his wife bleeding out and believed she was going to die. He felt helpless watching Rose shut everyone out. Why is he not talking to a grief counselor or therapist? Instead, he confides in a female coworker who clearly wants to become a wedge in his marriage, and then he acts as though he has done nothing wrong. I found Landon to be a bit of a jerk, honestly.
There is also something very realistic about how the qualities you initially find charming in a partner can eventually become the things you criticize most in a marriage. Landon seemed to have that attitude toward Rose. Some of the things that once made her uniquely herself appeared to become things he resented or judged later, and that made his attachment to his idealized version of “his Rose” even more frustrating.
The biggest surprise for me was Rose’s decision after she remembered everything and nearly died. I was genuinely shocked that she chose to take the forgetting pill again. If remembering once nearly killed her, what happens if another trigger brings everything back again? Something other than Landon could potentially unlock those memories.
Personally, I don’t think I could take the pill a second time after almost dying the first time. If she could remember her life as the other Rose, I wondered whether there was at least a possibility that she could eventually process some of that trauma and heal.
I also found Rose’s actions somewhat contradictory by the end. Earlier, when Landon wanted them to take the pill together so they could remember only the good parts, Rose argued that it wouldn’t really be their story anymore. I agreed with her. However, she ultimately chooses to forget everything herself, which made me feel like she was contradicting her own argument.
One thing I did wish for was more time with some of the side characters. Honestly, I found several of them more interesting than some of the main characters. I wanted to know more about Poppy and Carter, and I especially wanted more of Dave’s story. Graham, on the other hand, didn’t interest me nearly as much.
Despite my frustrations with Landon and a few of the repeated child comparisons, this book absolutely made me cry. The Good Parts is emotionally heavy, messy, and tragic. It asks whether we are still the same person without our memories and whether forgetting the worst parts of our lives could ever truly set us free.
Final Thoughts
The Good Parts by Evann Normandin is a heartbreaking story about memory, grief, trauma, motherhood, and the ways unimaginable loss can change both a person and a relationship. I loved the back-and-forth timeline and the gradual unraveling of what drove Rose to take the forgetting pill, even if I had some major frustrations with Landon and a few aspects of how Rose’s new personality was described.
Most importantly, I would not recommend going into this book expecting a romance. This is a tragedy about a relationship devastated by grief rather than a love story building toward a happily ever after. It doesn’t give readers the neat reconciliation I expected at first, but in some ways, that felt more realistic. Not every relationship survives trauma, especially when both people are suffering too much to help one another.
The story made me cry, surprised me, and gave me plenty to think about, even when I disagreed with some of the characters’ choices. If you’re looking for an emotional and thought-provoking read that explores whether we can ever truly escape the painful parts of our past, The Good Parts may be worth picking up, but don’t expect a traditional romance.
Ready for an emotional story about grief, memory, trauma, and the question of whether we can ever truly leave our past behind? Pick up The Good Parts by Evann Normandin through Bookshop.org and support both independent bookstores and this blog at the same time.
Check out other Contemporary Fiction Reviews:
Before I Forget by Tory Henwood Hoen
The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
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