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A review by amandasupak
Tell Me an Ending by Jo Harkin
4.0
4.25 stars
Imagine you have a memory so traumatic that you have it removed in a doctor's office. You know you had a memory removed, but now there are blank areas in your mind and you question if not knowing what happened is worse than knowing. What if the memory is so bad you consent to have it extracted in the middle of the night in a way that makes it so that you never knew you had it removed. And now you have an eerie feeling that something is missing or wrong and you don't know why. Then you suddenly get a letter in the mail that, via court order, all people with "midnight removals" must be notified in case they want to get the memory back, and you had no idea you had a memory removed. How do you even make a decision on something you do not have enough information to make?
This book really dives into some amazing stories about what it would be like deciding if you want to remove memories, live with deleted memories, or discover you had a memory deleted and struggle to decide if you want them back. And for that, I would say 5 stars for the concept alone.
The writing style is great! The first 5 chapters serve to introduce you (one chapter at a time) to our 5 main characters. Then they each take turns as you learn more and more about how they are related to the concept of having your memory removed. All of these characters bring something interesting to the table, and to avoid spoilers I won't describe their stories here. What caused me to not rate this 5 stars was the fact that the plot builds and builds really nicely until right at the end we go from having all of these first-person narrative stories, to just one character wrapping up most of the plots via 3rd person information. It's such a huge letdown. There was so much momentum towards the end that not hearing how it ends from each person individually was such whiplash. Overall, still a really good read!
Imagine you have a memory so traumatic that you have it removed in a doctor's office. You know you had a memory removed, but now there are blank areas in your mind and you question if not knowing what happened is worse than knowing. What if the memory is so bad you consent to have it extracted in the middle of the night in a way that makes it so that you never knew you had it removed. And now you have an eerie feeling that something is missing or wrong and you don't know why. Then you suddenly get a letter in the mail that, via court order, all people with "midnight removals" must be notified in case they want to get the memory back, and you had no idea you had a memory removed. How do you even make a decision on something you do not have enough information to make?
This book really dives into some amazing stories about what it would be like deciding if you want to remove memories, live with deleted memories, or discover you had a memory deleted and struggle to decide if you want them back. And for that, I would say 5 stars for the concept alone.
The writing style is great! The first 5 chapters serve to introduce you (one chapter at a time) to our 5 main characters. Then they each take turns as you learn more and more about how they are related to the concept of having your memory removed. All of these characters bring something interesting to the table, and to avoid spoilers I won't describe their stories here. What caused me to not rate this 5 stars was the fact that the plot builds and builds really nicely until right at the end we go from having all of these first-person narrative stories, to just one character wrapping up most of the plots via 3rd person information. It's such a huge letdown. There was so much momentum towards the end that not hearing how it ends from each person individually was such whiplash. Overall, still a really good read!