Thoughts on Books with Memory Loss

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Memory loss is a major trend in young adult books recently. I've always been a little bit weary of books with memory loss after my experience with them. My feelings towards books with memory recovery as a main aspect usually end up as one of my favorite or least favorite books, depending on how the books are presented.

Some of the books that I have read that include memory loss in one form or another include: Pushing the Limits, The Maze Runner, The Program, and Pretty Girl-13. Other popular YA books that I have not read yet include: The Adoration of Jenna Fox, Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac, Forget You, Mistwood, Unremembered, Glimmer, and Mystic City.

A few of the main reasons why I end up really liking books like this is the suspense that often ends up building in the story line. Of the books that I read, Pretty Girl-13 was by far my favorite because it was an extremely complex and suspenseful story with many layers that unfolded page by page. I loved how we, as the reader, didn't know what was going on until the main character did, leaving myself guessing, along with the main character. This slow unraveling is also present in Pushing the Limits, and The Maze Runner, but each of those stories have their own unique aspects that make them different. Pushing the Limits focuses on relationships between characters as the main character's memory is being restored, and the Maze Runner is a dystopian story that just plain messes with the reader's mind.

One of the things that I find really hard to like about memory loss books is when we know what happened before the character does. This was present in The Program. When the reader gets to see the life and relationships between characters and then the memory loss occurs to the character in the middle of the book, I find it extremely difficult to like the book anymore. When the reader is smarter and knows what's going on, I almost feel like there is no point to the story if we already know what the character is searching for. 

I'd love to hear more opinions about what you, as a reader think about books with memory loss. What do you like about them, and do you agree with me? I'd also love to hear about more books in the genre if I left any you know about out.