Title: The Memory
Author: Lucy Dawson
Narrator: Clare Corbett
Publisher: Bookouture

[Synopsis]

She’ll never forget… I’ll never forgive.

People always notice my daughter, Isobel. How could they not? Extraordinarily beautiful… until she speaks.

An unsettling, little-girl voice, exactly like a child’s, but from the mouth of a full-grown woman.

Izzie might look grown-up, but inside she’s trapped. Caught in the day it happened… the day that broke her from within. Our family fell apart that day, and we never could pick up the pieces. 

[My Review]

The Memory is full of suspense, secrets and family drama, with a hint of mystery too.

It mainly focuses on two families – Isabel and her mother Eve, who suffered an intense and disturbing ordeal years ago leaving Isabel permanently affected, and Claire and Tim, who are also going through a tough time, and this leads to them relocating to a new house with all sorts of secrets!

I don’t want to give much away about this novel, as I started listening to the audiobook without too much idea about what to expect, or what it was really ‘about’, and I’m glad about that. This was because I felt it did a great job of mixing together plenty of family drama with some unsettling, almost-supernatural-but-not-quite (thankfully, as I’m not really a fan of the supernatural in books) incidences. It did take me a little while to get into, but once I did I was hooked.

The characters are a real mix of likable, irritating and not at all nice! There’s definitely an element of not knowing who exactly is nice and who isn’t until towards the end, but it’s not really about any big reveal – although there is a very significant reveal that I thought was very well done, this is more about the families trying to come to term with their history and why some of them behave in a certain way.

There were some things I thought were going to happen which didn’t, and I’m glad of it, whilst there were plenty of other surprises which I thought were really interesting. The pace isn’t super fast but just right to keep me interested without being *too* dramatic.

I think this is so well written, told mainly from Claire and Eve’s perspectives and covering a wide timeframe, reaching right back to that fateful day when Isabel was only 7, forwards to the present day as we see Isabel in her mid 30’s. It’s a real page turner and I really enjoyed it!

[Rating: 4/5]

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