My Name Is Memory ~ Ann Brashares
Genre: Adult Fiction
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
336 pages
ISBN: 9781594487583
Source: Borrowed from my director
Lucy is crushing.
She’s crushing hard.
She loves Daniel, like totally, oh, em, gee.
Problem is: she is (and most of her friends are) pretty sure that he’s oblivious to her existence.
After a mildly traumatizing scuffle at a high school dance, they find themselves in each others arms, whispering and remembering things from very strange places.
It turns out that they do know each other. They love each other, in fact.
It’s simply been a few lifetimes since they have embraced.
Fighting time and other evil forces, Lucy and Daniel are sent, sprawling back through time’s memories as they piece together their “today” from myriad tomorrows.
The outcome is a little bit lukewarm but the concept is really neat. A history geek at heart, the idea of two souls following each other through some of history’s best and worst times, strikes me as romantic and entirely fascinating.
Overall, the concept worked for me. The story, for most of the book, worked for me, too. Daniel’s voice remains the more lucid but Lucy has her moments of clarity, too.
I think, the thing that didn’t work for me was the “Adult Fiction” genre label. As a few other reviewers have pointed out, this is , in truth, YA. Sure, a few eloquently placed language bombs are scattered throughout and a few incarnations of Daniel and Lucy drop their, ahem, socks but, over all, this was written in a style and pace similar to the simplicity of most of the mediocre YA fiction, out there.
Now, don’t read this, wrong; I enjoyed the book. I did, though, think there could have been a little bit more depth added to Lucy and to the story, itself to merit the move to Adult Fiction. Even truly good YA needs a bit more depth to sail a story. The book is apparently part one of three, however, so maybe it will flesh out in the second and third.
Iwriteinbooks's Blog 
I have seen several other reviews that have said this is really YA. It does sound interesting, though.
It’s terrible to use that as my backdrop but it really felt that way. I don’t mean that YA is bad but it just puts emphasis in a different place. I had a really hard time remembering that the characters (who were supposed to be post grads) were 23 and not 14. Oops!
This sounds interesting. I will have to add it to my wishlist. My teaser is from My Soul to Steal by Rachel Vincent which will be published at the end of the year. Happy reading!
This one has been intriguing me for awhile…I must add it to the list.
Here’s mine:
Sounds like another book to add to my tbr list!
My Teaser
That’s almost exactly how I felt, though I can’t really say that I “liked” the book, but I gave it 3 stars, so I didn’t hate it. I stated the same thing about the genre being my number one pet peeve. It upset some people who thought I was slamming YA, but to each his/her own. In the end, this was not an adult book, like you said. Nice review. 🙂
Haha, you know, I really shied away from writing what I did because of that exact thing. I didn’t want anyone to think I mean that YA was bad; it just seemed written for a younger audience. There are many YA books that are incredibly deep and well thought out. For the most part, though, they fit a fairly formulaic pattern, good or bad, and this sort of felt like that for me. I actually googled the title and “YA” when I was done with my review and found yours and I felt a little bit better…so thank you for going first. ;O)
I have read mixed reviews of this book, and am not sure if it would be one for me. I do think my daughter would like it though.
Oh, I don’t think it’s your “type”. :O) It’s SUCH a great concept, though. I think that if it weren’t, I wouldn’t be so frustrated by the dropped ball. there were so many ways to do this idea but she didn’t really get into the depth I needed,
I enjoyed it too. But yes it’s not adult fiction. It’s very YA. But still good. Yes, I have high hopes for books 2 & 3.
I had a real hard time with this one. I liked one with a similar concept though – Kirstin Miller’s The Eternal Ones.