"I read this while on a flight and boy, did I have tumultuous emotions after reading this.

I deeply appreciate the amount of work the author and her team has done to put together the contents of this book. It feels like a brief peek into the minds and lives of enslaved persons during the peak of legal slavery (how contradictory) and after slavery was abolished.

However, the content was not written in a way that had adequate and continuous storytelling. The disjointedness actually had me contemplating multiple times whether I should drop the book. It was way too dry with far too little analysis on the socioeconomic and psychological consequences of the impact of slavery on individuals and extended family members.




"

"Proceed With Caution:

This book contains altered memory, dementia, kidnapping, and a gunshot.

The Basics:

Lies My Memory Told Me is narrated by sixteen year old Nova. Nova's parents helped invent Enhanced Memories, a way to digitally preserve and play back memories. It's the hottest technology on the market, but after meeting a boy who doesn't use it all, Nova starts to question this supposed revolutionary tech. It doesn't help that her parents have been acting super strange and she's been feeling off.

My Thoughts:

Lies My Memory Told Me has a very intriguing premise. I love the idea of being able to watch someone else's memories in order to gain new experiences. It's like a 100% immersive movie! In fact, in the world the author created, the Enhanced Memories are all the rage. Everyone watches them! Well, except for the mysterious boy that Nova meets in a club who mistakes her for someone else.

Lies My Memory Told Me started to lose me early on because while I love the idea of Enhanced Memories and totally believe that they'd become a raving success if they existed, I did not believe how the people acted in response to them. Enhanced Memory discs have only been available for two years, which I did think just goes to show how quickly new technology can be adopted and essentially take over.

However, whenever someone mentions doing something in real life, like ice skating for instance, the instant reaction is "OMGNO that's sooo dangerous! Why would you want to do that when you can experience it from the safety of your couch?!" They act like it's completely unheard of to leave your house and go do stuff. It's been TWO YEARS. If this technology had been around for their entire lives, I could understand. But they were like thirteen, so they definitely remember normal life.

The plot twist was pretty predictable. There's really only so many options when you're dealing with recorded memories and your own memories being hazy. Particularly when it's your own parents who invented the technology. And why in the world would they live in the same town as "the scene of the crime." Like, they couldn't have moved anywhere else in the world? They had to be in the one place where Nova would be found out, spoiling their entire plan? Stupid.

The one thing that I did like about Lies My Memory Told Me was how it got me thinking about what makes us who we are. Is it our mind or our body? If our memories were installed into a different body, are we still ourselves or are the now the person who's body our minds are inhabiting? I read Gory Details shortly after this, and there was a chapter about head/brain transplants, which brought up similar questions.

In the end, Lies My Memory Told Me was disappointing. The characters weren't believable at all. Everything was just too convenient to make the plot move quickly.  I wish there had been more innovative twists to this great idea.

Read more at ."

"This was an okay book.

The idea of Enhanced Memories is kinda cool. The plot started off really well in the beginning but that momentum didn't last till the end. The ending felt a bit unsatisfying-- but that could be because I haven't processed all my thoughts of this book just yet.

Might write a book review for the blog, so stay tuned!

3 stars "

"Wow! This book’s main concept has been scripted at one of my most favorite Black Mirror series episode 3 of first season: “The Entire History of you� sharing the same idea: accessing the memory records of someone else’s, hearing, seeing, feeling them can cost you more than you expected. ( if you haven’t watched! Go for it! New Dr. Who is also one of the casts)

Robert Downey Jr already loved this idea so much and bought the movie rights for his production company. But before seeing the idea as a movie, it turns out as a twisty, dystopian book and served us freshly baked from oven.

As soon as I saw the same brilliant concept, I was so excited to read this book. But I didn’t enjoy the execution of this finest idea.

The first half of the book made me felt like I attended a long, boring conference about the importance of Enhanced Memory: it kept going and going, never stopped. A few times I went back to make sure if I didn’t read the same pages over and over because I felt like I read the same words, same manifestations. There are too many repetitive paragraphs.
This started not like a dystopian story. It was more like analysis of what did go wrong with the dystopian world.

Second half was so much better and the author added some great ideas into the concept and the conclusion is also semi satisfying so when you pass through the first half, the book gets a little better.

I’m giving solid, not bad but I truly expected more from this kind of genius story line stars. I got a little disappointed. If the first half could be edited and cleaned from repetitive cycle, it would be much interesting, mind bending, addictive reading because there is still so much potential with this promising premise.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Inkyard Press for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest thoughts."