In The Reminders, Val Emmich’s debut novel, we meet Gavin Winters, a police detective on a TV series, and a man mourning the loss of his partner Syd. In an excess of grief, he tries to burn all the things that remind him of his grief, nearly burning his house down. He flees to stay with his friends, the couple that set him up with Syd. There he meets their daughter Joan Lennon Sully, a ten year-old girl with highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM) which means that, she remembers every detail of everything she experiences. Her memories are everlasting. Gavin finds comfort in her memories of Syd, bringing him alive in vivid detail.

For Joan, life is not going the way she wants. Her musician father is shutting down his studio, giving up his career for more stable work. She is also troubled by her grandmother’s death and the loss of her memories to Alzheimers. She is concerned with being forgotten so decides to write a hit song, win a songwriting concert, and be remembered forever like her hero John Lennon. Gavin used to write songs with her father and she proposes they team up.

In a profound way, the two of them help heal each other. It’s a moving story, full of warmth and humor.

I enjoyed Val Emmich’s The Reminders. It made me laugh. It is easy to like. Although it’s considered adult fiction, it feels like young adult to me, there a lightness and a resistance to going too deep that make it enjoyable, but less meaningful. This is a book about grief, but when the grief becomes too painful, the story shifts. It is told in alternating chapters by Gavin and Joan.

Joan is adorably literal. She’s smarter than the average ten year-old, but then she does have a superior memory. She is realistic in many ways, not able to effectively express her emotions, trying to fix things with magical thinking–such as the idea that winning a songwriting contest will solve everything.

Gavin is more complex. He is grieving and while Joan is giving him new memories of his lost love, her memories reveal that Syd was hiding something from him. Is he mourning someone who lied to him? With Joan, he explores the past and finds out how deep and lasting love can be.

I love that this story explores friendship, an adult/child friendship that is kind and pure. Gavin’s grief is realistic, and his efforts to work through it, the swings into despair are real. There’s real wisdom in The Reminders, wisdom about memory, loss, and grief. It’s a book full of love.

The Reminders will be released on May 30th. I received an advance e-galley from the publisher through NetGalley.

How does a book earn a 3-star rating? For me, it’s a book I enjoyed reading but one that doesn’t make me FEEL and is not one I rush to read again. Val Emmich’s The Reminders fits the criteria here for a 3-star read.

Gavin Winters is grief-stricken over his partner's death and flees Los Angeles for New Jersey, hoping to find peace with the family of an old friend. Instead, he finds ten-year-old Joan. Joan has the rare ability to recall every day of her life in cinematic detail. Joan has never met Gavin, but she did know his partner, Sydney, and waiting inside her mind are vivid memories to prove it.

Told in the alternating voices of Joan and Gavin, I found Gavin the more likable of the two. Joan came across as whiny and annoyed me. I liked Gavin and would have like to know more about him and Sydney. The few feelings this book inspired were for Gavin and Sydney. There was a hint of mystery as Gavin finds out things he didn’t know about Sydney from Joan. I enjoyed this tiny hint of intrigue.

I often take notes while reading a book that I’ll be writing a review for … things that stick out that I liked and disliked. I didn’t take any notes while reading The Reminders because nothing stuck out. I suppose it’s good nothing bad stuck out, but nothing worth remembering stuck out either. As a debut novel, The Reminders is okay and I would recommend it to friends, but as I stated above, I’m probably not going to read this one again.

Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and author for the opportunity to read this wonderful book - I loved it!

Maybe I was just in the mood for an uplifting, heartwarming story about grief (yes, you read that right), friendship, family, dreams. And this debut novel filled the bill.

Told in alternating chapters from the viewpoints of Gavin, an LA actor, devastated by the sudden death of his partner, who literally sets fire to all of Sydney's things in an attempt to exorcise him from Gavin's life because of the pain. Joan Lennon (yes, names after John), a 10-year-old, with HSAM (highly superior autobiographical memory) who can remember every detail of every day of her life. However, after losing her grandmother to Alzheimer's, she becomes obsessed with making sure that she is remembered. Her dad has a recording studio on the ground floor of their apartment building in NJ and it is Joan's sanctuary. Her shared love of The Beatles with her dad bonds them together. When she learns that her family must shut down the studio and lease the space, it rocks Joan's world.

These two lost souls come together in a flurry of remembering and forgetting. It's just a good read with lots to discuss - I'm sure it will be a book club favorite. Bravo!

When I read the blurb for this book and requested it I knew that it would be a lighter read when I needed a break from thrillers or heavy historical fiction. When I read this great novel I found it had so much more depth of characters, wonderful writing and several individual stories going on at the same time. I loved this book!

I am always in awe of an author who can really create the voice of a child and make it so believable, and the author is a man creating this wonderful protagonist, Joan Sully, age 10. Another book that I loved from last year was “On the Shores of Darkness There Is Light” by Cordelia Strube with the wonderful “Harriet” the narrator of that story, about the same age.

Joan Sully has a real medical condition called HSAM (highly superior autobiographical memory, which means that she can remember all of the things that happened to her at from any date and time, but it will only be the things that mattered to her. She and her grandmother were kindred spirits and she has so many wonderful memories of her, listens to her cassette tape often. Joan wants to be remembered, she wants to write a song that people will listen to, love and think of her. She is upset that her grandmother has forgotten her as she has a form of dementia and sometimes doesn’t recognize her. As the story progresses, she also wants to help make some money to help pay for her dad’s music studio which is going to close and which Joan loves, along with the important time with her dad.

The other main character, Gavin, is a good friend of her parents and she had met him previously. He has just lost his long time partner. At first Gavin is convinced that he wants to get rid of everything that reminds him of Sydney, to the extent that he got himself on television for starting an incredible fire in his yard including furniture, pictures, everything but the kitchen sink!

Afterward he realizes that he wants to have more memories and he knows that Syd visited Joan’s parents often so he enlists Joan’s help as she recites all that she can remember about Syd. In return Gavin is to help her write a song to win a contest.

I hope I haven’t written too much, getting a little long winded, but just enough that you will get a copy of this book as soon as it is published at the end of May! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

I received an ARC of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.

I couldn't finish this. The child was just a bit too precious as a narrator.

Whoops, I accidentally read a book by a white dude, not having looked into this author beforehand (and he's not just any white dude: he played the cute young coffee guy Liz briefly dated on 30 Rock! Which explains all the Hollywood stuff in this book!). Anyway, this debut novel focuses on two people: a little girl with HSAM, that thing that Marilu Henner has where you remember every single thing that ever happened to you on every single specific date, and a Hollywood actor whose partner has suddenly died, and he's awash in grief, and goes to stay with some old college friends (the parents of the little girl). I liked both of these characters and their respective journeys a lot, and thought the exploration of grief was really moving, but the little girl's narrative voice didn't always work for me, and the end was a little predictable. Still, an entertaining and cute story. B+.

To find a person who has the extremely rare ability to remember every detail of anything that happened on any day of her life turns out to be a particularly precious gift for one of the main characters in his first novel, <B>The Reminders</B>, by Val Emmich. Gavin Winters has lost the love of his life, Sydney, and he leaves L.A. where he works as an actor to visit old friends, Paige and Sully, in NJ. The supremely major character in this novel is the ten year old daughter of Paige and Ollie. Joan Lennon Sully has HSAM (highly superior autobiographical memory). Joan is a wonderful character who is complex, filled with yearnings and needs that one would suspect in a child who can remember every part of her life. Joan and Gavin create a relationship that fills the needs both of them are wrestling with - growing up and giving up a loved one.

I cannot begin to understand the heavy burden and stress that goes with HSAM, especially in a child. Placing her character with a grieving adult man works well in this story. It is lovely, sad, and encouraging. I stood on the sideline and cheered for everyone in this poignant first novel.

ARC courtesy of NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company (May 30th 2017).

**Review will be published to blog on 29 May 2017 at 10:00AM EST**

I chose this book because:

I think I’m attracted to books titled “The [Something]s” and anything to do with creatives, i.e. The Interestings, The Collective, The Animators. Joan seems like a curious, special kid, and I’m excited to see the world through her eyes and join her on her quest. When we grow up, many of us lose our childlike wonder, but I think that is something we all need a little more of. Maybe that’s what Joan will do for Gavin. I’m also intrigued by the drama surrounding Sydney. What did happen during Sydney’s final months?

Upon reading it:

First of all, because I’m a heteronormative piece of poo, I assumed that Sydney was a woman, but Sydney is in fact a man. Joan heard about Sydney through her mother, Paige, and assumed Sydney was a woman until she finally met him in person. That was when I discovered Sydney was a man, and it’s cool that we discovered it at the same time in the narrative. Don’t worry! This isn’t a spoiler! I love that even though, yes, Gavin and Sydney are gay, this story doesn’t focus on their gay identity. Not that talking about LGBTQIA+ identity isn’t good (it is!), but I love that being gay isn’t their whole identity. Yes, they are gay people, but that doesn’t mean they’re just GAY. They are people. They have stories. And you’re going to have to read the book to discover Gavin and Sydney’s. (Maybe I should try a new “gay until proven otherwise” approach to life haha (http://bbcsherlockftw.tumblr.com/post/26272962365/real-life-assume-straight-until-proven))

"People have all kinds of reasons for why they don’t remember. They blame it on their batteries dying, or their ears not hearing right, or just being too busy, or too old, or too tired. But really it’s because they don’t have enough room inside their boxes. When I was turning five, Mom bought me a box for all my art. She was fed up with me leaving my drawings and projects around the house. She told me to choose which pieces were most important because there wasn’t enough room in the box to keep everything. That’s how it is with people’s brains. There’s only enough room for the most important memories and the rest gets thrown away. When I’m the thing that gets thrown away, because I’m not important enough, it’s hard not to get the blues like John Lennon on The White Album when he sings, I’m lonely and I wanna die."

I immediately fell in love with Joan. She’s so pure! I love that this book uses simple words. But the ways in which they’re used. Man. They make you feel things. I think many of us can relate to not wanting to be forgotten. For some of us, it may be a selfish reason; some of us crave the attention. For some of us, it may be an existential reason; what is our purpose and how do we do something that matters. For Joan, it’s simple. She’s a girl who remembers everything. But when she remembers everything and the rest of the world can’t, it’s a lonely feeling.

"But then I realized, it’s not people’s fault that they have crappy brains. That’s what reminders are for. Mom never forgets to pay the bills because she has a reminder on her calendar. And Dad remembers to put new batteries in our smoke alarm only because it starts beeping. And no one forgets Martin Luther King because he has his own holiday every year. It works the same way with songs. Everyone remembers John Lennon, even Grandma, because his songs are reminders. My song is going to be a reminder to everyone that they should keep me in their brainboxes, and I have less than two weeks to finish it."

So there’s the heavy stuff. Joan, being forgotten. Gavin, widowed (a widower?). But there’s also so much love and light and life.

"I don’t know if I can wait that long because waiting is the worst thing ever invented."

Okay so maybe talking about the “worst thing ever invented” isn’t the happiest thing to say, but it made me smile when I read it. When I was little, there were a lot of things that were the worst things ever invented. I repeat, Joan is so pure!!

Now I’ve said a lot about Joan, but I think that I’m more of the Gavin in this story, and this book is my Joan. That childlike wonder that I said we all need a little more of? That’s Joan. I reserve my five-star ratings for my favourite books so I don’t give books five-star ratings often, but this book is a five-star for me. I know we’re less than halfway through the year, but I think The Reminders could be one of my favourite books of 2017; it has humour, it has pain, it has art, it has existential crises, it has life.

Unique. Not a book that you will forget easily, and one that I would wager you will have a hard time putting down.

What a lovely, lovely book. Heartfelt without being sentimental, sweet without being cloying, intelligent and insightful without being clinical. Highly recommended!!

A wonderful story that will make you smile, laugh, and cry. Loved it to bits!

4.5 Stars

Joan Lennon Sully, age ten, has HSAM (highly superior autobiographical memory) and wants to be remembered. Her grandmother forgot her toward the end, despite Joan’s attempts to get her to remember her. It never worked.

“Grandma, it’s me.” She tries. She really tries. But I’m not there. Grandma Joan had to throw me out of her brainbox so she could have enough room for the lyrics to all her favorite songs. She remembered those until the day she died (Saturday, October 8, 2011).

If Grandma Joan was able to forget me, that means anyone can. Even Dad.

Gavin Winter, on the other hand, wants only to forget. When his partner Sydney died, everywhere he looked he saw reminders of him. Another reminder that Sydney was gone, only old memories left, no new ones to make together.

Everywhere I turn are reminders, some three-dimensional, others invisible, al of them speaking and taking up space.

One night, in an attempt to free himself of these reminders, this overwhelming grief, he gets rid of virtually everything in their house he could associate with Sydney. It’s only fairly recently he’s achieved some notoriety as an actor, so his recent grief-filled behavior gets more than a little media attention. In an attempt to escape it all, the media, the reminders of everything he’s lost, he leaves California to return to New Jersey, his home state, and home of old college friends who happen to be Joan’s parents, Paige and Ollie.

Still media bruised and emotionally in tatters, Gavin arrives at the home of Joan’s parents. Bandmates once upon a time with Ollie, they shared old memories, just as Sydney and Paige had their own old memories that they had shared. But it’s really Joan that Gavin begins to form a bond with as he remembers what he’s heard about her gift. Questioning his destruction of all memories of Sydney now, when there are now no new ones to look forward to. Perhaps with Joan, Gavin can find new memories of Sydney.

Joan remembers things from early on in her life, but not everything – only the things she was focused on at the time. Conversations, who was wearing what, what day of the week, the date. She doesn’t like to wear the same outfit more than once. But she can remember the dates that Sydney visited; she can remember the things they talked about, how he looked and what he said.

Joan wants to be remembered, like John Lennon, but she also wants to help save her family. Her father’s on the verge of leaving his music career behind for a job that is just that: a job. Not a passion or something he loves. Income. She’s found a way, she thinks. A songwriter’s contest. Maybe with some help from Gavin, she can save it all from dissolving like her grandmother’s memories.
Memories, be it remembering everything or forgetting, being or feeling forgotten, are at the heart of this novel – the importance of memories. Joan’s quest for fame, for the immortality that she believes come with fame – the idea of being forgotten is such a foreign concept to her.

There is much to love about this debut novel. It is charming, endearing, without being overly sentimental, heartwarming, with unique and charismatic characters. I loved that Joan’s HSAM was counterbalanced with her grandmother’s Alzheimer’s, the wishing to forget painful memories offset with painfully wishing we could recall them. I loved that the story is told in alternating chapters through the voices of Joan and Gavin, which added yet more to the story.


Pub Date: 30 May 2017


Many thanks for the ARC provided by Little, Brown and Company

Joan has a rare brain condition that causes her to have an exact recall of things that happened to her. To her, for a person to be forgotten is a terrible thing. She decides to enter a song writing contest so that her music, like that of The Beatles before her, will cause her to be remembered forever. She forms as unlikely bond with Gavin, a friend of her parents. Gavin just lost the love of his life and is trying to forget because remembering is too painful. Together, Gavin and Joan, embrace the memories of the lost Sydney in hopes of creating a song worthy of being remembered.

I'm rating this book with 3 stars because it just didn't grab my interest as I had hoped it would. The writing was good enough, and I think it would be a great book for a different audience, but it was just mediocre for me. Perhaps a young, aspiring song writer or a fan of The Beatles would embrace this story. I also don't tend to choose stories with alternative lifestyles simply because it makes it hard for me to connect with the character. I chose this book because I thought Joan's memory condition sounded interesting but it was really more of a backdrop for Joan's songwriting journey of discovery.

I received this book through Netgalley.com in exchange for my honest review. Thank you to Netgalley.com, to Little, Brown and Company and to Val Emmich.

Overall a good read. I had a hard time settling into the characters. I enjoyed Joan's narrative much more.