Thanks for the Memories by Cecilia Ahern

From the author's website: How can you know someone you’ve never met? Joyce Conway remembers things she shouldn’t. She knows about tiny cobbled streets in Paris, which she has never visited. And every night she dreams about an unknown little girl with blonde hair.
Justin Hitchcock is divorced, lonely and restless. He arrives in Dublin to give a lecture on art and meets an attractive doctor, who persuades him to donate blood. It’s the first thing to come straight from his heart in a long time.
When Joyce leaves hospital after a terrible accident, with her life and her marriage in pieces, she moves back in with her elderly father. All the while, a strong sense of déjà vu is overwhelming her and she can’t figure out why …

Well....I finished this a few days ago but still can't quite decide how much I liked it, which, I guess, means not all that much. I liked each of the characters, thought they were quirky and fun. I liked Joyce's personality and her Irish pop was a hoot. Her friends bickering like toddlers was supposed to be cute but really was just annoying but they did seem to truly care about Joyce so I tolerated them. The settings were interesting and there was some adventure as well like lying their way onto an audition for Antiques Roadshow.

What I didn't like was how heavy handed the donor acquired memory element was. That same idea was explored with a heart transplant in Just Take My Heart by Mary Higgins Clark but it was more subtle, a piece of a bigger plot. In this one, the memories just take over and it is really hard for me to swallow, particularly since the idea of donated blood going directly from one person to another is debunked in the book itself. It is explained that blood is broken down into different parts and distributed piecemeal but yet we are still supposed to believe this huge reaction has occurred for her because she received donated blood.

So this book wasn't my cup of tea but I like Cecilia Ahern's style and I would read another book of hers without hesitation.


This counts toward the e-book challenge. Click on the logo to see my progress.