The Memory Book: A Heartbreaking YA Romance About First Love, Friendship, and Living in the Moment - Hardcover

Avery, Lara

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316283746 ISBN 13: 9780316283748

Publisher: Poppy, 2016

Synopsis

Perfect for fans of Everything, Everything and Five Feet Apart, a bittersweet story of love and loss, told one journal entry at a time.

Sammie McCoy is a girl with a plan: graduate at the top of her class and get out of her small town as soon as possible. Nothing will stand in her way-not even the rare genetic disorder the doctors say will slowly steal her memories and then her health.

So the memory book is born: a journal written to Sammie's future self. It's where she'll record every perfect detail of her first date with longtime-crush Stuart, and where she'll admit how much she's missed her childhood friend Cooper. The memory book will ensure Sammie never forgets the most important parts of her life-the people who have broken her heart, and those who have mended it. If Sammie's going to die, she's going to die living.

About this title

About the Author

Lara Avery is the author of A Million Miles Away and Anything But Ordinary. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she is a contributor at Revolver and at work on her next novel.

Reviews

Gr 9 Up—Overachieving senior Sammie McCoy has her life clearly laid out. First, bring her debate team to victory at Nationals, then deliver her speech as valedictorian, and make the move to NYU to study economics and public policy before moving on to Harvard Law. Her plans get radically interrupted when she is diagnosed with Niemann-Pick Type C, a rare genetic disease that will initially affect her memory, rendering her vigorous studying moot, and that is ultimately fatal. Determined to fight the diagnosis, Sammie begins keeping a diary, figuring that when her memory fails her future self, she will have a way to reference her day-to-day life. Sammie's voice is a bright, relatable, and uncompromising one, and when her inevitable decline begins, readers will be surprised and pained by it, right along with the book's fiercely undeterred protagonist. Strengths abound in Avery's touching novel, and Sammie's relationships, both friendly and romantic, are no exception. Not knowing how to deal with the revelation of her illness, the teen's closest friend, Maddie, pushes her away, and the protagonist's relationships with gifted writer Stuart Shah and boy-next-door Cooper are intensified by her decline, in what feels like a genuinely complicated manner. VERDICT Fans of John Green's work and Jennifer Niven's All the Bright Places will be reaching for the tissue box at the book's tear-inducing end.—Joanna Sondheim, Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School, New York City

Edition details

• Publisher: Poppy
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0316283746
• ISBN 13: 9780316283748
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 368