The Forgotten by Tamara Thorne

The Forgotten Reviews

• 
  Phil

  I have read several books by Thorne and really enjoyed them; The Forgotten, however, was a bit of a let down. I am not even sure I would call this a horror novel, more like a drama/thriller with some ghostly elements, but so be it.
  
  The story centers on Will Banning, a 'shrink' in a small SoCal town in 'Thorneverse', e.g., located next to a few other 'towns' were other of her novels take place (lots of Easter eggs if you are a Thorne fan as well). Will's BFF Maggie is a vet in town, and they hang out with a gay couple, one of which works as Will's receptionist. Will's brother Pete also lives in town and runs the local cable company. Pete is an asshole, make no mistake. Pete used to torment Will when they were kids (Pete was several years older), but after a stint in the Navy, Pete seems somewhat reformed, but old wounds heal slowly if at all.
  
  While Thorne gives us the backstory on the main characters, strange events start to happen in Caledonia. While Will is with a patient, a huge murder of crows smashes into the office through French glass doors. A few days later, other birds smash into his front door. Maggie is being besieged by pet owners at the vet, reporting all kinds of strange animal behavior. Worse, several of Will's patients report seeing ghosts (one even claims his penis is talking to him, giving him lewd suggestions). While Will is very skeptical, even he sees the ghosts in the gay couple's living room.
  
  So, what is causing all the ruckus in our small town? Not much of secret, as we learn pretty early on that Pete is still covertly working with the Navy on some ELF (extra low frequency) tech transmitted via the cable boxes in people's homes...
  
  Now, Thorne can write, and has a lovely, nasty sense of humor for sure and usually includes some fairly racy, erotic scenes as well. TF has this, and a set of fun characters, but as I mentioned at the start, this was really more of a prolonged drama than a horror story. The sexual tension between Will and Maggie got old quick (they had been BFFs since they were 4), and this story arc featured rather prominently. Pete is a great asshole for sure, and this helped a bit, but over all, a pretty meh outing for Thorne. 2.5 ghostly stars, rounding up for a few surprises at the end.
• 
  Elke

  This book was neither fish nor fowl: part ghost story, part military conspiracy, mixed in with absurd sitcom like characters and irrelevant explicit sex scenes thrown in at random. Not to mention the cats, which made a nice kind of radar for the invisible bad waves, but otherwise were given too much attention. Reading for the umpteenth time how they crawl around Will was simply boring.
  
  The only parts worth reading were those concerning the mysterious events and ghost visions happening in the neighborhood and the exploration of their origin. As it is, a good idea for a ghost story was messed up by adding too many unnecessary ingredients burying instead of supporting it.
  
  I've already read several pretty good novels by Tamara Thorne, therefore the The Forgotten was a very surprising disappointment.
• 
  C.L. Roman

  Great ghost story. Relatable characters, interesting twists.
• 
  Tara Wizorek

  Not gonna finish this one. It's really crude and just disgusting. I'm no prude, but this is just trash with a ghost thrown in. Plus, the ridiculous sterotyping of the gay assistant is unforgivable. I had to go back and check the author, and was surprised to see a woman writing this (at times) sexist, misogynistic junk.
• 
  Catherine

  I just couldn't get into this book.
  
  The characters were shallowly written in my opinion. What build up there was in the story was very under-whelming. Then there was a climax that was sort of just there so suddenly and, to be honest, it was even more of a let down then the build up was! I just wasn't a fan of the book. The one saving grace that I can give it is that I did enjoy Kevin and Gabe and sort of wish that there had been more of them in the book or, perhaps, had them as the main characters. This could have been higher rated if it were a slightly shorter story with a little bit better character personality and with an ending that actually MEANT something or packed a bigger punch.
  
  This was just meh.
  
  I can't recommend it for anything.
• 
  Sue

  Format: audiobook
  Narrator: Jamison Walker
  
  A psychologist with his own issues finds himself flooded with more patients than he can handle when strange sightings have people flooding to him for answers to their apparent hauntings. Ghosts are not something Will Banning believes in, there has to be another logical explanation but Will may just learn that not everything can be explained away!
  An enjoyably interesting and intriguing story. I’ll be looking to see what else this author has written.
  The narrator does a good job, he’s certainly a good fit for this story.
• 
  Cassandra Glissadevil

  4.2 stars
  Horror/military mashup. Other reviewers didn't catch Thorne's sense of humor. Not so subtle sex laden character last names like Hardwick and Cockburn. I normally abhor romance mixed with horror, but Thorne pulls if off reasonably well. Plenty of scares and eerie moments.
• 
  Paul

  You can clearly see that Tamara is playing and having fun with this one, and knowing that brought me along for the ride.
• 
  Jackie

  Not horror but still has horrible moments and revelations that when finally revealed only confirmed my early suspicions.
• 
  leemarriott

  Don't know why there were so many negative reviews, I thought it was Brill, typical Tamara fashion, sick, twisted and a comical element, highly recommended 👌
• 
  April

  DNF Starting the book with a man who believes he was a talking penis quickly made my mind up that I couldn't suffer through this book.
• 
  Barbara Brown

  I have to say "yuck". I'm sure this author has many fans who would call me names and scratch out my eyes, tell me not to be a prude. Thing is I like a hot romance novel now and then. I am not off-put by physical intimacy in books but it should be part of the natural progression of the story. One review of this book suggested the author was trying to write erotica. I think the book failed in that category as well since the erotic scenes were not very intense, just gross. "I think that while i'm standing here plotting my next move I'm going to masturbate" - that sort of thing. However, everyone climaxed in this book but the main couple. And the story.
  
  The story sounded good in the summaries i looked at. Didn't hold together,though. I was almost bored about halfway through the book. The characters were pretty shallow. The main character, Will, has an obnoxious (semi-evil) brother named Pete, who has teased Will his entire life. During a phone call Pete gets on Will's nerves by calling him "Willy" and says outloud "Still hate that name, huh? Think there is some deep dark reason for that?" To which Will thinks to himself, "Willy is slang for penis and you are fully aware of that." Did the author forget that "peter" is also a similar euphemism? What was her point? Peter vs Willy?
  
  Most of the character names sounded like names you would see in porn. Lara Sweethome, Mickey Elfbones, Mia Hunt Hartz, Carrie Cockburn, Mr. Hardwick, Sgt. Jeff Thursday? Really?? Also, the author's word of the month was Hypnogogic. I lost track of how many times that word was used after about 10.
  
  Sorry if you are a fan of the author. Maybe I'm disappointed because I had no idea what i was really getting into when i started this book. I had completely different expectations. I was hoping for a good paranormal, supernatural, ghost story. I had hoped I would feel something for the tortured main character, a psychologist. I thought there would be more psychological thrills.
• 
  Melissa

  I don't know if I would really call this a "horror" novel. More like a supernatural/conspiracy thriller? Without a lot of thrills. Will is a psychologist. He's been best friends with Maggie since they were 4. Evidently that means they cannot date. Even though they both have feelings for each other. His older brother Pete is a psychopath. He used to bully Will when they were younger. Especially after their oldest brother Michael died. Pete now owns a thriving cable company. Which allows him into peoples homes. Animals start acting weird. Then people. I waited for something to happen. But, we get a lot of unnecessary details: what they ate, repeated details about Wills patients, etc., etc. I liked that there were gay characters in it. BUT, one of them was a stereotype. Then the neat ending. I've read other books by this author. They were nothing like this. I'll still read any others. I just wouldn't recommend.
• 
  Brian Goff

  The first book I read by Tamara Thorne was Haunted. I will admit that my first thought was how bad can a book be for the low cost it was. I found myself having trouble putting the book down. I enjoyed it so much.
  
  After I finished Haunted. I had to look her up and find more books. So, the next book I read was The Forgotten. And I must say. I loved this book. I liked the fact that the story takes place near the same town as Her book Haunted. While reading it I keep seeing Candle Bay (another book) I bought and sorry to say missed placed it. So know I must buy it again. Not just to read it but to see if it ties into the other two books.
  
  Tamara Thorne? You are such an amazing writer. I would like to thank you for not only writing about the paranormal, which I am a big believer, but with The Forgotten not only have you writing about E.L.F. waves but also with the psychologist type of view point (in my eyes at least).
• 
  Wendi WDM

  I was really hoping this would be a good ghost story. I forgot that I had read another Tamara Thorne novel earlier in the year and was horribly disappointed.
  
  But this book...oy vey. Her depictions of the characters are so generalized and stereotypical. Oh, this character is gay? He MUST be uber-flamboyant.
  
  I don't know. I read it straight through. I did like the idea of the government using magnetic waves to control citizens of a town, and how the waves not only affected people but also animals. But I didn't like how, once again, she has to always fall back to sex. I think she gets bored. I mean, even in her thank yous at the beginning of the book she makes reference to some guy saying that he always likes to come last. Ugh! How awful is that?
  
  Why doesn't she just write erotica? It seems like that's what she wants to do anyway!
• 
  Conan Tigard

  Right from the get go, I liked the way Tamara Thorne put words to paper. She has a simple and satisfying was of telling a story that makes it very believable. The characters in the story are well-though out and the plot is electrifying.
  
  I found that I did not want to put the book down because I had to know about Will's past and how they were going to stop Project Tingler. Would the ghosts invade and kill everyone? Or are they just apparitions for people to see? Would the government stop its testing when they noticed the ghosts? Or would they just continue and watch what happens? I really enjoyed this tale of ghosts and was pleasantly surprised when it wasn't a splatter book. Is the story scary? No, at least it wasn't to me, but it is a great tale.
  
  The Forgotten by Tamara Thorne is an excellent book that any ghost enthusiast will enjoy.
  
  I rated this book a 9 out of 10.
  
• 
  Lucretia

  With The Forgotten, Tamara Thorne takes a chilling ghost story and lays it neatly over a conspiracy, that is equally as haunting, making nothing safe, real or unreal. As with her other works I have read, in The Forgotten, she creates a world filled with characters as real as anyone you pass on the street, with her words coming to life and reaching from the pages, haunting readers as only she can. She is the master of the ghost story, bringing to each of her novels a realism that will cause even the most skeptical to turn on a light, while they read.
  
  The Forgotten is a must read novel, by a must read author, and I highly recommend it to all readers of horror and thrillers. If you love a good ghost yarn, you are in for a treat.
• 
  Robin

  I read this book thinking it would be a good ghost story. I couldn't have been more wrong. The story focuses on an increase in strange animal and human behavior in the small town of Caladonia. Psychologist Will Banning (although if the author had done her homework would have realized her character was actually a psychiatrist) and his longtime friend, veterinarian Maggie Maewood team up to get to the bottom of the unexplained phenomena. The writing is terrible. The choices of characters names is laughable. The plot is all over the place. Don't waste your time with this one.
• 
  Michelle

  I guess I really went into this with different expectations than I should have. I was expecting a 'hide under the covers' ghost story and got more of a psychological tale of abuse mixed with governmental conspiracy. So while I didn't find anything per say bad, (other then the rather stereotypical categorizations of a particular gay character as another reader pointed out) it just wasn't what I was looking for.
• 
  Jenny Baker

  4 stars!
• 
  Angela Brainard

  fast paced, kept you involved!