TBR: Six Months Later

Six Months Later by Natalie D. Richards is a thriller book centered around a high school senior named Chloe who “misses” 6 months of her life. At the end of chapter one, Chloe is falling asleep on her desk at school in late May, but at the start of chapter two, finds herself surrounded by darkness, school desks, and snow falling outside. She’s confused by her situation and even more so when Adam, a high school senior she never would’ve imagined associating herself with, appears telling her that she called him to meet her at the school. The setting is already sinister, matching the somewhat creepy vibes that resonate throughout the rest of the book as Chloe tries to figure out what caused her to “lose” 6 months. Chloe slowly comes to realize that a couple of major changes have come over her: slacker at her studies to a smarty-pants, unpopular kid to the kid everyone wants to talk to, only dreaming of a boyfriend to dating the most popular guy at the school, and having a best friend named Maggie to being ghosted by her. 

To begin with, for a thriller, this book isn’t bad. Not bad at all. There’s something about the book that keeps you curious about what happened to Chloe, and just as you might be losing interest, the book provides another lead or hint to solving the mystery. Blake, Chloe’s new “boyfriend,” and Adam act quite suspiciously throughout the novel, which made them quite suspect in my eyes –something that was confirmed by the ending. 

The biggest issue I had with this book was that in retrospect, some elements of it really didn’t make sense to me. (MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD*) We find that the cause of Chloe’s memory loss, as well as the other major changes that occurred to her, was a drug brewed into a tea distributed during the study sessions of an SAT prep group. It caused Chloe to turn into a “genius” due to its effect of making the user soak in much information at high rates. Its effects, according to the book, were described as follows: “Vivid dreams. Increased cognitive ability. Dry mouth. Excessive thirst. Sleepwalking. Headaches. Paranoid delusions… memory disturbances.” The first strange element of the book that I noticed was at the part where Chloe is telling Adam and Maggie at their school where she hid the drugs that would incriminate Blake and his father for drugging the SAT prep group and suddenly spots Blake’s father, Daniel, outside the window. It turns out that Daniel worked for some failing pharmaceutical company and was hoping to rescue it by generating a lot of profit off of the drug that was tested on Chloe and other students. My issue was why Daniel would want to risk letting 3 people know that he was connected to the drugging incident by being outside the window in plain sight. He could have hired someone else to do that for him, just as he did with Adam when he promised large amounts of money for monitoring the SAT prep group. I also didn’t understand why Chloe, Maggie, and Adam decided on a plan of fleeing from Daniel at the time when it appeared that he was all alone. Being younger and pretty strong (particularly Adam), I don’t see why they couldn’t have overpowered him, especially given how Chloe describes him as “graying.” Lastly, I failed to understand why Chloe and Maggie decided to go for the box where Chloe had hidden the drugs when they could have gone to the police first and then gotten the drugs. By sticking to their plan, they put themselves at a great deal of unnecessary risk of being caught by Blake, Daniel, or one of their potential associates and then suffering additional consequences. But to give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe all of these could be explained by considering how the characters were in a high-stress situation and as a result, couldn’t think as clearly. 

Another issue that I had was with what I consider to be an unnecessary death. I didn’t understand why Julien, a student of the SAT prep group, in particular, was killed by Daniel or one of his associates. Julien’s memory loss and symptoms could have continued to be played off as schizophrenia. Even if she did regain her memories, she wouldn’t have any concrete evidence to bring against Daniel. I also didn’t understand why Dr. Kirkpatrick was carrying the paper indicating the SAT prep group students who had been drugged in her briefcase when she could’ve locked it away or just had it stored digitally. It was just so conveniently lying in a place where Chloe could grab and read it when it was evident just how incriminating of a document it would be for the psychiatrist and Daniel. 

But moving on, there is a fair deal of romance in this book, particularly between the main character and Adam. I personally found it to be a bit cheesy, but if you enjoy YA romance in general, I think you’ll find it appealing in this book. 

In conclusion, Six Months Later is a thriller with some plot flaws but sequel potential. The concept behind the book is actually quite unique, although memory loss of characters isn’t anything new. Don’t analyze it or try to break it down too deeply, and it is likely that you’ll end up enjoying this book. It was a relatively quick read with no real explicit content. The characters also don’t feel artificial for the most part, but some unanswered questions contained within the plot are quite easy to guess –for instance, I immediately knew that Chloe had hidden the drugs in Maggie’s backyard because that was the only place that really made sense in my mind. But maybe I’ve just had too much experience with crazy Netflix plot twists. Anyways, 6 Months Later is an entertaining piece of literature that you’ll probably enjoy