When Memories Become Currency – How Much are you Willing to Give?
by Megan Lord
This Momma was overdue for some serious reading, and WOW, this book delivered! The perfect vacation binge read. I started this book a day or two before we left on our trip, and got addicted quickly. I binge read the whole flight to Ecuador, and on every form of transportation we took once in the country, finishing half way through the trip! That means start to finish, I read this book in 1 week, and I’m a slow reader to be honest. I haven’t finished a book that fast since The Girl on the Train 2 or 3 years ago! That speaks volumes for how I felt about this in itself.
“Hardly a minute goes by when I don’t think of him, but in a way, isn’t that a lovely thing… To be so loved that you’re always near one’s thoughts? I see him every day through the memories we made together, and the ones he gifted me…”
The Memory Thief is a futuristic story in which memories become a society’s form of currency. There are “gifted” individuals that can transfer memories from one person to another or steal them for themselves. Memories are what form a human being. What make you actually you. The lower class, ungifted citizens, rely on selling their personal memories to pay rent and survive – but at what point do you give up so much that you no longer exist yourself? The rich take so many memories they overload their brains with false realities of not their own that they no longer exist themselves either and go mad. People do extreme things to make memories that are worth a lot – but how far is too far just to imprint a memory for someone else?
I’ve always been a strong believer that memories are extremely important, but fleeting and hard to hold onto as time goes by. I personally take A LOT of photos, and have no shame doing so because after losing my gramps I got a strong dose of how important photos really are when they’re all you have left. Would I sell any memories myself – good or bad? That’s a difficult one – if you have to in order to survive, what pieces of your life are you willing to give away? How will that change you as a person? What if someone could just steal your memories from you?
As with every good YA book, there’s a strong love story, there’s rollercoasters of up and down emotions, there’s the best friendship, and there’s devotion to the parentals. I don’t want to give too much away, because I hope everyone reads this book – but here’s a strong quote to give a glimpse into one of the many heart tugging emotional rides of the story: “I bought my mother’s life with my father’s blood.”
Honestly if it wasn’t for the fear of too many spoilers if I tell too much about this book I could go on and on… but I won’t do that to you. This is one of those books I would LOVE to see made into a movie. Hollywood – read this book and make it happen!
The Memory Thief by Lauren Mansy
In the city of Craewick, memories reign. The power-obsessed ruler of the city, Madame, has cultivated a society in which memories are currency, citizens are divided by ability, and Gifted individuals can take memories from others through touch as they please.
Seventeen-year-old Etta Lark is desperate to live outside of the corrupt culture, but grapples with the guilt of an accident that has left her mother bedridden in the city’s asylum. When Madame threatens to put her mother up for auction, a Craewick practice in which a “criminal’s” memories are sold to the highest bidder before being killed, Etta will do whatever it takes to save her. Even if it means rejoining the Shadows, the rebel group she swore off in the wake of the accident years earlier.