My Name Is Memory

By Ann Brashares
Published by the Penguin Group
June 2010
ARC courtesy of Penguin Group (Canada)

I was really looking forward to reading this book. I read and thoroughly enjoyed the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants series and I couldn't wait to throw myself into this new book billed as "The story of a love that lasts more than a lifetime".

Daniel and Sophia have met and fallen in love at various points throughout history. The book begins in 2004 when Daniel and Sophia are in high school. Daniel recognises Sophia (now Lucy), but Sophia only begins to have memories of Daniel at the Senior Ball, the last event of their high school days.

After that, I pretty much stopped reading.

The portions of Daniel describing his past lives and "memory' are tedious and I started to skip over them around page 68. Time shifting is not something I like at the best of times, but this was poorly done and rather preachy in tone. I gave up any hope of finishing this book at page 111.

The first two pages were skilfully written and set the book up rather nicely for what could have been an interesting and fascinating story. It's hard to fall in love with a love story when your attention is diverted by badly written time warps. We already know Daniel realises he has been born many times over. The stronger part of the story was Lucy getting in touch with her past lives, but there was so much going on in the book, I stopped caring.

A disappointment.