Is there something you'd like to forget? Finn, Mei, William, and Oscar all chose to have parts of their memory wiped but now they're troubled. The problem with memory is that it's all tangled up- one event leads to others and other memories. Noor, a psychologist with a memory clinic in London, has her own issues. This is hard to describe but trust me- it's thought provoking and at times challenging, These characters are very much like real people, with all the warts and positives that go along with that. The plot could have easily gone off the rails but it doesn't- it's a crystalline examination of what we can lose by choosing to forget. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. It's a great read for fans of sci-fi and literary fiction.

"Tell Me an Ending" is an intimate look into memory deletion and the ripple effect it creates in the lives of people who choose to forget. The book follows five people who each have a different relationship with Nepenthe, the company who developed the technology to selectively erase memories. While the speculative science fiction aspect of this technology is a constant thread throughout the plot, it takes a backseat to the powerful discussion around the benefits and costs of forgetting and how the lives of their family and friends are irrevocably changed.

I am confident this book will explode in popularity once it's released, and I can easily picture this as an incredible, binge-worthy Netflix adaptation (think: "The One" vibes). Tell Me An Ending revolves around Nepenthe, an organization that will remove painful, often traumatic memories using a quick, painless procedure. The book follows five characters, each connected to Nepenthe in some way.

There's Noor, a somewhat mysterious scientist that continually questions the morality of the work she and her coworkers are doing.

Finn, an easygoing architect that begins to question his wife's loyalty.

Mei, an insecure college student that has snippets of memories from a country she's positive she's never been.

William, a police officer, husband, and father that struggles with PTSD.

And Oscar, a handsome man in his late twenties that doesn't remember anything at all.

I enjoyed following these characters along on their journeys. It was an exciting book to read, even though we learn of some heartbreaking moments in their lives. Most of the sections ended on cliffhangers, so it was an easy book to keep reading and get lost in.

If you like your sci-fi to be more people-based, more about the human condition, this one's for you. My heart broke a million times reading this book for these people, struggling with life and love and memory. For fans of Station Eleven and A Visit from the Goon Squad.

What an interesting, compelling concept for a book! Dystopian/sci-fi novel that kept me reading despite not a genre I typically read. This would be a great choice for a a book club - lots to discuss: would you delete a traumatic memory from your memory if you could? What would that do/change your as a person? Fascinating idea. The story ran a bit long for me but I went with it too curious to see where it was going. Glad I read it. You should do. Thanks for the advanced copy, Scribner! I’m grateful.

Tell Me An Ending is pitched as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind meets Black Mirror. This dystopian story follows five seemingly unrelated characters who have had painful memories erased, and the consequences for doing so. Some characters connected more than others, but overall it was an interesting story.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

"The problem with thinking about forgetting things is that it always makes you think about the things you want to forget."

Nepenthe is in the business of memory removal (they don't call them wipes). Clients may be self-informed - she knows she witnessed an accident, but doesn't actually remember the event - or self-confidential - not even the knowledge that they had a memory removed. Some people have been against it since the beginning, of course, but the number of protestors outside the clinics has increased in the past year, since the scientists found that memories can be recovered. The result of the following lawsuit is that all the self-confidential patients must be contacted and given the option to have their memory restored.

Noor has been a psychologist at Nepenthe for 10 years now. She's straightlaced - aside from that relationship with a client. She had been working up the courage to ask her boss Louise to okay a slightly dodgy memory wipe for her, but then some slightly dodgy things started to pile up with Louise herself. Noor spotted something with the phrase "RASA" on Louise's phone, but Louise denied any knowledge of...whatever that means. And Louise has been having Noor approve her to look at some patient files, ostensibly because their contact information has changed, and they have to be contacted as self-confidential clients. But on further inspection, Noor discovered, these folks WERE successfully contacted - and they all said they wanted a memory restoration, until Louise got in touch with them and they all changed their minds.

And then there's Mei, who left university a year ago and recently started experiencing traces - she must have had a memory removed, and now snippets have returned. A view of some houses along a canal, a man's voice she doesn't recognize. Contact with her old friends leads her to believe answers lie in Amsterdam, so she leaves her dad's in Kuala Lumpur to chase her memory. And Finn and his wife Mirande, who discovers she had a memory removed when she receives the notification from Nepenthe. Regardless of the controversy over traces and memory restorations, William feels like it may be the only way to restore his former life and relationship with his wife after he finds himself struck with PTSD due to seeing a photo of a crime scene - highly unexpected given his position as chief inspector. And finally Oscar. He has no idea what's going on, just in general. He's currently living in Morocco, but knows very little about himself - no memories before the age of 16, and then only spotty bits for years. Some of the memories don't give him much confidence in his past self - a gun, a white room, men he doesn't know in suits. He does have a lot of money in his bank account to fund his travels - helpful as he goes on the run anytime someone seems to recognize him - but he has no idea where that money came from.

Like any memory wipe/restoration story (Bourne Identity, Eternal Sunshine...), there are elements and differing opinions on how your memories make you who you are and what can be changed by altering them. Sometimes books with different points of view can result in a mush of voices, but I found the characters distinct here. I thought the way characters and relationships melded was interesting. Oscar's sections were my favorites to read - it's of course exciting to read the story of the man on the run who doesn't know why, and he's also good hearted.

Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for the eARC. Tell Me An Ending will be published March 1st, 2022.

Have bad memories that you wish you could have erased from your brain? We all have them, but in this sci-fi tale, people have the ability to go to a tech company and have them erased.

I have always been intrigued by this possibility. Several movies have tackled the concept. In this book, you read about specific people and the bad memories in which they want to shed. It almost reads like a compilation of short stories.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and the sci-fi concept.

Tell Me An Ending was provided as an advanced reader copy by #scribner in exchange for an honest review. It has a pub date of March 1. This book made me think “what if” – as a human, and as a therapist who focuses on trauma treatment. Tell Me An Ending was a slow burn, so if you expect a fast pace, this may not be what you are looking for, but it absolutely is a provocative storyline. The characters manage to be both likable and sometimes not, which goes a long way toward them being relatedly human. Jo Harkin does an excellent job of writing the thoughts and feelings of the characters in a way that feels natural to read. Although a slow burn and a slow-at-times read, this is a story that will stay with me and always have me wondering, “What if?”. #NetGalley #TellMeAnEnding #JennReviews

A complicated, twisty book that never really seemed to click with me. I liked certain characters more than others but I thought this book was going to have these characters storylines intersect more than how they did. Overall, an unsatisfactory book.

Strong 5 ⭐️

This book was so strong omg. The sci fi in this book the concept in this book was amazing. This was definitely a page turner it had so many twists and turns and always kept me wanting to know more about the memories and stories of the people in the book. Im still blown away at the concept of this book. Also the cover is so cool. I requested this book on netgalley and im so happy i got this ARC because this is a novel every sci fi fan should read. All the people in this book have such strong leads and every chapter was entertaining. I just didnt know what was going to happen next. It basically follows a clinic and people who go there to get memories , trauma etc erased etc and stuff.. But then a worker at the clinic starts questioning a woman at the clinic and stuff i just dont want to say alot because of spoilers. READ THIS BOOK! Strong 5 ⭐️i loved it. The details of the clinic were so cool as well. I will say at times sometimes i didnt know what was flashback what wasnt but as i kept reading i started to kind of know which was which.. But overall great book.

I love the premise of this book - dystopian world, erasing painful memories (and what other type of memories?!?) - but it spent way to much time building up to the whole point. The stories felt irrelevant and it was hard to find the desire to keep reading.

DNF at 12%. After reading over 50 pages of this very slowly, I need to give up. I can't make it through another almost 400 pages. This isn't a bad book but it isn't for me I didn't rate it on Goodreads and going with 3 stars here based on NetGalley's own star system.

The story is told from multiple POVs in a kind of inner monologue-style that was driving me crazy. There are flash backs/memories that keep confusing me and some of which is dialogue with no quotation marks which I find very difficult to read. It just didn't work for me at all. I'm disappointed, I was really excited about the premise of this one but I just can't do it.

*I received a free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

ARC given in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed the premise of this book and that the author used so many different characters viewpoints. The only issue I had with it was near the beginning I had to go back to make sure I had all the characters storylines straight. It probably wouldn’t have happened if I had read the whole thing in a day or two but life happened and my reading got spaced out more than I would’ve liked. I love the movie Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind and this had a very similar vibe (and even mentioned the movie a few times). I will definitely recommend to my friends and family, starting with my teenage daughter, who also really enjoyed that movie.

This book is paced perfectly and keeps you on your toes throughout. It also really encourage the reader to think about certain themes of modernization.

”Do you want to know a secret? It’s about you. It might make you happy, or it might be something unimaginably horrible. Once you know it, you can’t unknow it..”

In Tell Me An Ending, a high-end medical company called Nepenthe has developed the technology to isolate and remove people’s unwanted memories. Sounds too good to be true,and so it must be. Former patients, unaware they’ve had the procedure, are suffering from “memory traces,” and Noor, a patient-care psychologist at Nepenthe, begins to suspect that something sinister is going on, and that company executives are trying to hide the truth.

”What if RASA is a code word for procedures that went wrong, somehow, and had to be covered up?”

This book’s premise drew me in right off the bat, and I went in with high expectations, hoping for a combination of Recursion and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. And I was absolutely hooked by the chapters dealing with Nepenthe, Noor, and the allegations of conspiracies and cover-ups happening within the company.

”There is no eternal sunshine; there is no spotless mind.”

There were other storylines woven in too, involving current and former Nepenthe patients and their family members, and how they’d been impacted by the memory removal process. These chapters read more like short stories - isolated narratives with different characters, settings, and conflicts; sharing a repeating theme/pattern, but having little else in common. (Although they did tie together by the end!) I wasn’t as intrigued by these, and found myself wanting to skip ahead to “the good parts.”

”It’s all out of control. What is Noor a part of? Something doing damage, harm spreading out across the world, each harm dividing and multiplying.”

At times, the book was a little hard to follow. The narrative pattern would abruptly shift consciousness by jumping suddenly from present-day interactions to memory fragments, with little to no warning, and this was often confusing. Also, the author uses quotation marks to denote speech inconsistently—sometimes adding them, sometimes not—and that was also challenging for me. (Obviously that’s not something that impacts the book’s content, but for me, it does impact readability.)

”What would you get rid of, if you had to get rid of a memory?”

Overall, though, I really loved the premise and stayed interested throughout the novel, wanting to discover, along with Noor, what Nepenthe was really up to! And ultimately, the secondary characters’ stories did become interesting in really meaningful ways. It took a while to get there, but I’m glad I stuck it out - this book was absolutely worth the read, with its fascinating questions about morality and ethics, and will keep me thinking for a long time!

”The public doesn’t hate us because we played God. It’s because we weren’t God. We got something wrong. They’ve realized we’re humans. They’ll never forgive us.”

——

Thanks to Jo Harkin, Scribner, and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author, for an ARC of this book, in exchange for an honest review.
The synopsis of this book sounded intriguing to me so I requested a copy to read.
Unfortunately, I have tried reading this book on 2 separate occasions and during this 2nd attempt, I have
decided to stop reading this book
and state that this book just wasn't for me.
I wish the author, publisher and all those promoting the book much success and connections with the right readers.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for providing an arc

The novel makes good use of opening up on the everyday aspects of Noor's job. The environment of Nepenthe and the professional procedures Noor applies towards her patients highlights the rather desensitized treatment that Nepenthe provides to its customers.

Nepenthe represents a physical amalgamation of capitalistic greed, consumerism and the use of collective/individual memory as both a weapon and a healer. Funnily enough, while reading, I was reminded a bit of Attack On Titan and the power of the Founding Titan to take away the memories of people in order to keep them inside a metaphoric (and in the case of AOT a physical) cage. Within TMAE, that cage is absolutely metaphorical and differs from person to person. What hinders you from living your life? Is it the missing gaps in your memory that could tell you who you are? Does the lack of memory contribute to keeping you locked in a narrative that you had no consent in participating in?

As the novel progresses and we are introduced to more characters of varying backgrounds, we grapple with the sense of self and the turmoil that comes with self identity. Early on, the story introduces the concept of "sameness" or, more diligently said, the idea that without certain memories, we are no longer the same person we were when those memories were ingrained within us.

I think this concept is well highlighted through existentialism, but Harkin makes a point of using interpersonal connections in order to push the narrative differences between being "the same person" and being "different".

Grammatically speaking, I had a few personal qualms with how Harkin uses dialogue to differentiate between past events and present events. Often there was a lack of distinction between the two, which although not difficult to figure out, can be annoying. Personally, it took me out of the story several times. That being said, this may just be a formatting issue because I am reviewing a digital eARC. In which case, I don't see that problem persisting in a physical copy or officially published digital copy. Even so, this is something to consider while reading.

All in all, I think TMAE is a very interesting take on memory as self-identity and does so by mirroring our reality as any good speculative fiction should.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this title. I generally like books with this format, multiple narrators whose lives may or may not intertwine by the end. It felt a bit long, but the concept of memory erasure was fascinating. I think maybe one of the characters could have been removed without too much effect on the overall story, but this was still very enjoyable. Would make a good miniseries.

A new story I haven’t read before. Slightly science fiction, but only because it isn’t our reality yet!

Technology has gotten to a point where you can have a specific memory of an event erased from your life as long as it is a week period or less. You simply go the the Nepenthe hospital and have it taken care of. You can choose to remember or not remember that you had this memory erasure done.

This follows the story of 4 characters who chose to have their memories erased but they are having slight flashes of it, maybe…and are confused. Thus begins the development of their stories and what they do about it.

This will be a book I will think back on. The whole concept of memory removal is fascinating if not alarming! Thinking of who we are and who we will become because of our life experiences and memories is an integral part of our life! I don’t know that I’d be willing to have a memory erased regardless of how awful it might be….but then again….

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for an advanced e-copy of this book.