The Memory Collectors
The Memory Collectors
By: Dete Meserve
[Fulfills prompt: ‘A book about memories’ for the Shelf Reflection 2026 Reading Challenge]
[On my list of Most Anticipated Books of 2025]
[This book was nominated for the ‘Best Science Fiction’ category of the 2025 Goodreads Choice Awards Reading Challenge ]
“I’ve been trapped in grief for so long I’ve forgotten what hope feels like. But here it is. There’s a chance. A real chance to stop this. We can save Sam. We can save ourselves.”
So I’m reading this book, and I’m not even 6% of the way through and it is pulling on every heartstring stretched across this mother body. I imagine the melody to sound like Sarah McLachlan’s song ‘I Will Remember You.’ But in the way it was intended, not a poor dog way. (Right? She didn’t write that song for animals, right?)
But then I remember— this is a science fiction novel. That usually means we’re looking at the dark side of tech so I need to kick the Kleenex box to the curb and be ready to hate those bad guys trying to erase the entire human population, etc.
The Memory Collectors have to be these ominous people that trick you into giving them your memories that they then use for nefarious purposes like creating clones of you that live in an alternate universes or they change switch your memories with someone else’s to cover up crimes and whatnot. You know the drill.
Well, if you were looking for an adventurous, dangerous, dystopian story or a book exposing or describing society as a whole in a futuristic world, or anything I speculated about in the last paragraph, you will not find that here. That’s not a spoiler, that’s just helping you approach the book without feeling like it was a bait and switch which I did a little bit.
This is more of a fiction novel while using the device of time travel and adding in a little mystery. I think it was a good comparison for Goodreads to relate it to Wrong Place Wrong Time.
So keep the tissues if you need to, emotions might run high with this one.
“Don’t let your life pass you by
weep not for the memories”
This story is all about four people whose lives are intertwined— specifically on August 25, 2025— when disaster strikes for all of them in different ways.
It’s been three years since that night that changed their lives forever, and now, thanks to a new type of time travel technology, people can go back in time and spend one hour in their past.
All four of these people are somehow time jumping on the same day and find themselves back in Ventura, California on August 23, two days before the tragedy. But instead of the promised sixty minutes, they are not extracted back to the present. For days.
Even though they’ve been told they can’t change the future with anything they do in these jumps, they all decide they have to use this borrowed time to try and create a different outcome for August 25th.
“‘If you could spend an hour in your past, what would you do?’ This is the first question on the Aeon Expeditions application.” The most common answer is that they want to spend a little more time with someone they lost.
“I had no idea back then that once you love something— anything— all you can ever be sure is that you’re going to lose it someday.”
So here’s our cast of characters and the thing or person they lost:
Elizabeth- (this is the one that got me the most) Her adult son, Sam, was hit by a car and killed on August 25th. She has no idea why he was even there. — Sidenote: her husband is the creator of the tech
“I know that being his mom always will be the greatest honor of my life.”
Andy- He met the love of his life, Kate, shortly before August 25th but then she ghosted him and he can’t stop thinking about her.
“I’d always find myself wondering if I’d done something different, would we still be together?”
Logan- He was also hit by the same car as Sam. He survived, but he became paralyzed from the waist down. He grieves the loss of his mobility and visibility, feeling like he is now invisible to people. His mobility was also what was keeping him sober.
“I was training to rid myself of the demons that had control of my life.”
Brooke- She was the one driving the car that hit Sam and Logan. Her guilt and shame eat away at her and have influenced her relationships with everyone, including her husband and daughter.
“All I want is one hour of relief. One hour where I can escape the pain and the guilt and numbness of being me.”
The real mystery of the story is what happened on August 25th. Why did the accident happen?
Typically I would have preferred a standard, dark-tech sci-fi type of book that has good guys and bad guys and questions about how technology can be used in harmful ways. I don’t usually gravitate towards emotional books about regrets and if-only’s and primarily focuses on character development.
But every now and then I stumble into something of that sort, and I realize I like it. This was one of these cases.
It’s probably because the book immediately begins with Elizabeth in the past with Sam as a toddler and I just sent my youngest kids off to kindergarten.
Elizabeth thinks:
“In this moment, I am the one transformed. I’m free from all the worth that I wasn’t the best mother when he was little; that I was always too tired or not paying enough attention or never enough fun. I bring into this moment that this toddler stage in his life will end all too quickly. That I won’t be forever worn and weary and wondering what I did wrong or if I could’ve done better. And that’s when I see the beauty of it all. The joy of his giggles and his love for me that knows no bounds. The littleness of his body that once exhausted me, but now I desperately cling to… Then he will be forever gone, his future erased in a senseless accident.”
So many feels. This is why I usually grab thrillers over emotional fiction— I can’t subject myself to constant nostalgia and sadness about how our kids aren’t little anymore or even the fears of what could happen to our children or thinking about losing our loved ones. Every once in awhile they are good reminders. Like this— to see the beauty of it, the joy of it. But I can’t live here in the past. Book after book.
So anyway— I was immediately invested in Elizabeth’s story, in her grief and her confusion.
I liked the other characters too, but even if they weren’t there, I would have still been motivated to finish it just for Elizabeth’s part.
The book is divided into three parts— the first part sets the scene of going back in time, the second part focuses on them re-living August 25th specifically, and the third part is what happens after they return.
The chapters rotate POVs of all four of the characters.
Without giving away too much I will say that I really liked how Meserve handled the return. The way being in the past changed their perspective of their present was really good. That’s what made this a good book for me— the messaging, the self-discovery, the hope, the healing.
I also really liked that Elizabeth and Mark (her ex-husband) are given a second chance. That Elizabeth was able to have a conversation with Mark in the past to help her see what could be in the present.
“So, this is me asking you to marry me again. In the future.”
“Everything good begins with a maybe.”
<3
If they had done counseling, they probably could have seen it that way too, but hey, if you have the luxury of communicating to your past selves, take what you can get.
“I’ve been believing that every bad thing that happens has an easily identifiable cause. A perpetrator and a victim. Guilty and innocent. I’d believed the outcome of everything is within our control and when things don’t happen the way we think they should, someone must be to blame. But I see that’s not always how it is.”
Recommendation
I thought this was a really engaging read. The mystery helped connect all of the characters together keeping it a cohesive and intriguing story, but the character development is what took it to the next level. I think it gives readers some thought-provoking considerations to take into their own griefs, despairs, guilts, and hardships about agency and choices and second chances.
So yes, would recommend.
However, if you are looking for a science fiction-y novel, I’m not sure if this will scratch that itch. The only thing that makes it sci-fi is that there is some time travel, but that is just a vehicle to promote the plot, it’s not the plot itself. There is no time spent on how the tech works, why it went wrong, how it could be used differently because of what happened, or anything like that.
If you like this book or like this concept, I will reiterate that Wrong Place Wrong Time would be another book to try!
[Content Advisory: 2 f-words, 9 s-words; no sexual content that I can remember]
**Received an ARC via NetGalley** — I know… I read this super late…
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