What We Love and What We Leave Behind is a YA-focused novel about a young woman, Ursula, who wakes up in a mansion on the New England shore with no memory of her previous life. 'The House,' seems to act as a dormitory of sorts for herself and twenty other women, who have various degrees of memory recovery, various theories as to why they're there, and various motivations for staying. After a little bit of settling in, introspection, and establishing relationships, Ursula begins to embark on innocuous-seeming 'missions' while being promised her memories as payment. She then has to weigh how much she trusts these memories and how much she wants to allow them to influence her decisions going forward.
There are various meta-ish and sci-fi elements, but they're minor/subtle in nature. If you've ever read "Never Let Me Go," it's something along the same vein... The Science Fiction is there, but it's mostly focused on the character functioning in an unknown world in which reality is bent. Ursula ultimately falls in love with another of the girls, Sarah, who disappears three-fifths of the way into the book. The final conflict in the book is Ursula's choosing whether to cling to who she may have been or embrace who she might otherwise become, and she flees The House, bound for a world in which she hopes to find Sarah again.
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fridgeflower) wrote2018-02-04 01:49 pm
Dedication Page
Plot Summary (to be expanded)
There are various meta-ish and sci-fi elements, but they're minor/subtle in nature. If you've ever read "Never Let Me Go," it's something along the same vein... The Science Fiction is there, but it's mostly focused on the character functioning in an unknown world in which reality is bent. Ursula ultimately falls in love with another of the girls, Sarah, who disappears three-fifths of the way into the book. The final conflict in the book is Ursula's choosing whether to cling to who she may have been or embrace who she might otherwise become, and she flees The House, bound for a world in which she hopes to find Sarah again.