Review: The Memory Collectors

Title: The Memory Collectors

Author: Kim Neville

Release Date: March 16, 2021

Rating: 3.5/5 Stars

Find it here: Goodreads

Synopsis from Goodreads: Ev has a mysterious ability, one that she feels is more a curse than a gift. She can feel the emotions people leave behind on objects and believes that most of them need to be handled extremely carefully, and—if at all possible—destroyed. The harmless ones she sells at Vancouver’s Chinatown Night Market to scrape together a living, but even that fills her with trepidation. Meanwhile, in another part of town, Harriet hoards thousands of these treasures and is starting to make her neighbors sick as the overabundance of heightened emotions start seeping through her apartment walls.

When the two women meet, Harriet knows that Ev is the only person who can help her make something truly spectacular of her collection. A museum of memory that not only feels warm and inviting but can heal the emotional wounds many people unknowingly carry around. They only know of one other person like them, and they fear the dark effects these objects had on him. Together, they help each other to develop and control their gift, so that what happened to him never happens again. But unbeknownst to them, the same darkness is wrapping itself around another, dragging them down a path that already destroyed Ev’s family once, and threatens to annihilate what little she has left.

My Review: This was a really unique book that fell into the magical realism category. I usually don't love that genre but I am glad I read this one. I loved the idea that our objects have emotions attached to them, and I thought that the author did a great job incorporating the fantasy idea of emotionaly "stains" on objects into the very real human struggle with the past. While I enjoyed this book for the most part I do think it could have been more heartwarming, though that also could have been my mood at the time.

*I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book which I received from the publisher. All opinions are my own.*