Review: The Memory Thief by Lauren Mansy

Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Dystopian

Pages: 368

Expected publication: October 1st 2019 by Blink

Synopsis:

In the city of Craewick, memories reign. The power-obsessed ruler of the city, Madame, has cultivated a society in which memories are currency, citizens are divided by ability, and Gifted individuals can take memories from others through touch as they please.

Seventeen-year-old Etta Lark is desperate to live outside of the corrupt culture, but grapples with the guilt of an accident that has left her mother bedridden in the city’s asylum. When Madame threatens to put her mother up for auction, a Craewick practice in which a “criminal’s” memories are sold to the highest bidder before being killed, Etta will do whatever it takes to save her. Even if it means rejoining the Shadows, the rebel group she swore off in the wake of the accident years earlier.

To prove her allegiance to the Shadows and rescue her mother, Etta must steal a memorized map of the Maze, a formidable prison created by the bloodthirsty ruler of a neighboring Realm. So she sets out on a journey in which she faces startling attacks, unexpected romance, and, above all, her own past in order to set things right in her world.

My Thoughts

What do you get when you cross Hunger Games, Divergent, The Bone Season and Forget Tomorrow? You get The Memory Thief.

The concept is rather interesting, reminding me of the aforementioned books. There are those gifted with the ability to read minds, take memories or abilities, which makes for an interesting world. But for me, the pacing was difficult and made it hard to get into the book. If anyone has read The 100, you know that you’re constantly being thrown into the past which made it nearly impossible for the plot to move along. The Memory Thief does the same—it drags because you’re constantly re-hashing memories. I knew the concept of the story would make things tricky to play out and SHOW the reader the past rather than talk about it, but this also slows down the pacing of the book considerably.

I enjoyed the characters, I really did, but I found it difficult to remain attached to the NOW story because we were constantly reliving things that had happened already.

The ending was where everything happened and quickly so. You learn about so much more here than what you do with the first 3/4 of the book.

It was a good read, don’t get me wrong, I just couldn’t get past the memories/flashbacks.