Mesmerizing Memory

Memento Nora by Angie Smibert

* I received this book via Star Book Tours

* Release date - April 2011

This book receives a memorable 4 gnomes and a gnome hat out of 5 gnomes for having a great mix of characters and a plot that is just feasible enough to make you twitchy and start to contemplate whether the future of Memento Nora could actually occur.

The reader gets to hear the story from three separate points of view.  There's Nora, the very normal girl who doesn't seem to have a worry in the world.  Micah is seen as a slacker/skateboarder type of guy but he's a really good artist.  Winter is a tad bit eccentric but she's strong willed and makes fantastical sculptures.  These three very different people think up a way that may help them beat the system and start people remembering again.  The way the story is told also leaves the reader wondering if their can be a happy ending for everyone.

The setting seems pretty normal at first and then Nora witnesses a bombing and a body pretty much lands right in front of her.  In this future there is a giant terrorism organization that sets up attacks all the time, usually involving bombings.  Terrorism is seen as common place but also common place now are the TFC or Therapeutic Forgetting Clinics.  To deal with all the stress and to make sure there are no long term effects, anytime something bad happens you just go to a clinic.  While at the clinic you describe the memory and then you swallow a little white pill and forget all about what happened.  People even save up points from all their forgetting for prizes or trips.

Nora is introduced to a different way of looking at the world when she meets Micah.  Micah is not the usual kind of guy that she would even think about liking.   Through Micah she starts to see that her life is not as glossy as she though it was.  What starts off as them making up a comic just may turn into a social movement.

There are a plethora of bad guys in this story.  With terrorism being common and people wanting to forget anything bad, it's hard to know which way to turn to find a solution.  Nora and her friends don't know who to trust and their options seem to be very limited.  

Overall this story was a very fast read with engaging characters that will make you very curious to see what happens next.  The ending was great because it showed that everything may not have been in vain and that the future should indeed by interesting.  I can't wait to read the sequel and see what Angie Smibert does next with this world.