"The Binding" by Bridget Collins is genre bending at its best. This book sucked me in from page one and I didn't want to put it down.

What an odd, yet very interesting well written book! Dear Emmett, emotionally tortured Lucien. A bit of magic in a period piece that comes alive with the sights, sounds and smells of another time. Really different but I really enjoyed it!

Amazing! Such an inventive and creative novel! I am completely astonished at how creative and intricate this plot was. It takes such a beloved object and makes it so forbidden. Memories are such beautiful but fragile things and I love how this book interpreted it. I was so engrossed into the story from beginning to end. Such a great read!

In The Binding, by Bridget Collins, books contain a person’s memories; memories that a person wanted to be rid of and were bound to the book. Emmett, who was never permitted to read books and knows nothing about them, finds out that he is a binder: a person who can remove memories and bind them to books.

Outside of the leads, there are many characters who are pretty horrible. The premise is interesting enough to keep reading, though.

5,000,000,000,000,000,000/5 stars, seriously this book was amazing and I couldn't stop reading it. but definitely one of my new favorite books of all time.

Sometimes I worry that the world will dissolve into a giant ball of fire before we will ever reach the year 2019. But then I learn that certain books won’t be out until April. So the world absolutely cannot dissolve into a ball of fire just yet, people. We have to endure if we want awesome books.

I’m a slow reader. I think I’ve mentioned this before but nobody reads this so I might as well mention it again. I take my time reading. I will put down a book and pick up another. I’ll binge on a whole trilogy of other books while reading other books at the same time and slow myself down even more. I have a bit of a problem that way. But every now and again, I will find a book that will cause me to drop everything and just do nothing but read until I’m done. A book that will make me seriously consider staying up past my bedtime because I need to read just one more chapter! (Yes, I’m an adult and I have a bedtime, because I have a job that requires me to be conscious in the very early morning). The last book that did this to me was C.L. Polk’s fantastic debut, Witchmark. The Binding actually has a few things in common with Witchmark - both utilize first-person narratives to tell a historical/fantasy/romance between two guys. The similarities end there, though. Though if you liked Witchmark, you will definitely like The Binding. Just saying.

Anyhow –

So. The Binding. Imagine, if you will, an epic voice saying “in a world...”

In an alternate 19th century England where memories can be taken out of your head and bound into books, bookbinders have a pretty fearsome reputation. Want to forget something? Just go to a binder, and they’ll take your memories, bind them up into a book, stick that book into a vault, and you’ll walk out with no memory of whatever it is you wanted to forget. Sounds great, but also horrifying. In this alternate England, fiction is only just now beginning to be a thing – all books are people’s memories, bound up. Books are, therefore, pretty fearsome and powerful things. People sell their memories for profit. People buy books of other peoples’ memories for their own entertainment, or for blackmail, as some kind of sick power play.

In this world, Emmett Farmer (three guesses as to his occupation) is struggling to keep up with his work on the family farm (did you guess?) while recovering from a severe illness. One day he comes home and finds his parents arguing over a letter. A binder wants to take Emmett on as her apprentice. There’s no refusing such an offer – Emmett’s parents fear the binder will curse them, and Emmett, still very weak and somewhat sick, isn’t much use around the farm anymore. So he’s sent off to become the apprentice to Seredith, an ancient binder very secretive about her trade. The first third of the book has a confusing, fever-dream quality to it, as we gradually learn what bookbinding in this world actually is. Emmett (and, by extension, the reader) enters into the trade knowing almost nothing, so we learn as he does, and Seredith is not much help.

Especially not when Emmett is shown a book with his own name on it. What has Emmett forgotten?

To give away much more away would probably spoil the entire plot, but I absolutely loved The Binding. It’s got a strange, dreamy quality to it that sucks you right in and does not let you go. If you demand immediate answers to all of your questions, however, you might find yourself frustrated – we see the world as Emmett sees it, and solve the mysteries as he does. Not everything is spelled out. We’re never given a precise year for the setting, based on references to contemporary tech (mentions of pocket watches, reaping machines, references to transportation/deportation as punishment for crimes, gas lamps and whale-boned corsets) it could be anywhere from the 1830s to the early 1900s. The whole book has a real Lark Rise to Candleford feel to it, and that TV series is supposed to take place in like the 1880s, maybe? 1890s? I don’t know.

Alongside the dream-like quality of Emmett trying to figure out the business of binding and sort out his own fragmented memories is a romance that is so lovely and compelling that you won’t want to put the book down, even if it’s 9:30 in the evening and you have to be up at 5 AM to get to work. We follow Emmett as he gradually falls in love with another man, which, in the 19th century, is majorly Not OK. The romance is gradual and, at first, Emmett isn’t sure what it is that he’s feeling, and it’s so exquisite and realistic it made my heart hurt.

Writers of romances featuring straight couples: step up your game. For serious.

Long story short: The Binding is incredible. Read it. Stop everything. Read it.