My Name Is Memory by Ann Brashares
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Daniel is one of the rare people in the world who has "the memory". In other words, he remembers all his past lives and can recognize the souls of people he knew in those lives. He's spent life after life looking for Sophia, a girl he fell in love with in his first life. Some times he finds her, some times he doesn't. Somehow in all his many lives, circumstances have never worked out for Daniel and Sophia to be together without tragedy.
The story alternates between Daniel's past lives and his present day life where he has found Sophia and enrolled in the same high school as her. But how does he convince her that he's not crazy and that they have a long history together? It's a beautiful love story and towards the last half also very suspenseful and action packed. I was so absorbed I finished it in two days. I couldn't stop thinking about Daniel and his unique condition. I think this would make a great book club selection.
HOWEVER, the ending was terrible! It was very abrupt and jarring - like the author just decided to stop writing. I've seen many places on the Internet that indicate there will be a sequel and other places that state this is the first book in a trilogy but I wasn't able to find anywhere where the author or publisher confirmed this. (If you have please let me know!) So my five-star review is contingent on there being a sequel. If there isn't, then I would downgrade to four stars, maybe lower.
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I completely agree on all counts - Daniel's story haunted my thoughts while I was read-listening to this one. And I was extremely ticked off by the ending - "abrupt" is the perfect word for it.
But then a fellow GoodReads member put me out of my misery, at least temporarily, by pointing out the Editorial Review from Publishers Weekly on the Amazon sales page, which indicates that this is the first in a planned trilogy.
Now my misery at least is finite...I just have to wait for the next book! I haven't seen any word on timeline for that, though. It looks like the author keeps her Facebook pretty up to date, so hopefully we'll hear word there.
The author also posted on her blog in 2009 that Memory has been optioned for a film - before it was even through copyediting for publishing!
Posted by: Angie | February 14, 2011 at 04:28 PM