Memento Nora ~ Angie Smibert ARC review

Memento Nora

Marshall Cavendish Children's Books

April 1, 2011

192 pages

Amazon/Goodreads/Book Depository


Nora Jones lives in a world where consumerism has completely taken over and bombings happen nearly every day, in the same place that consumerism has taken over.

Now that Nora has witnessed one of these bombings first hand, she's taking her first trip to the TFC, Therapeutic Forgetting Clinic, where they'll give her a pill that will erase all of her bad memories and allow her to g on with her 'glossy' life.

That's what the whole society is designed around, forgetting . . . and shopping (where Nora was, actually, when the bombing happened) But what happens when someone wants to keep their memories?

In Memento Nora three teens work together to create a comic and show the world--or at least a few people--that maybe forgetting all the bad things isn't best.


Memento Nora presents a really interesting idea: what if you just forgot anything bad that happened to you. The big things and the little things. What if there was a pill you could take that would make it go away and you could go on about your (now) happy life?

Told in chapter that alternate between Nora, Winter, and Micah's perspectives, readers are able to see how the government in this society isn't all sunshine and roses despite that TFC and how forgetting has ultimately affected people.

It leads to wondering what would happen if you forgot certain traumatic or even just inconvenient events in your life. Would you be the better for it . . . or worse?

Some of the elements in Memento Nora remind me a little of XVI by Julia Karr (the screens everywhere marketing something) or, more so, Delirium by Lauren Oliver with the procedure that everyone should undergo and wants to but the main character begins to question.

Memento Nora is absolutely original and worth its own read, I only mention the other books because of how much I think readers who enjoyed those books will enjoy Memento (and they seem to have gotten more publicity). I don't think you had to love--or even like--either of those books to like Angie Smibert's debut, however--it has a very different feel.

I'm very glad to see that there's a #1 after the title (at least on Goodreads) because I definitely would like to see more of these characters (hopefully!) and the world Angie Smibert created where bad memories can be gone simply by swallowing a pill.

9/10

Thank you to the author and the publisher for my advance copy of this book!!