Excited to tell you all about The Memory Trees by Kali Wallace today!
Keep reading to learn more about this hauntingly beautiful read…
The Memory Trees
by Kali Wallace
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Release Date: October 10th 2017
Genre: Young Adult, Magical Realism, Fantasy, Paranormal
by Kali Wallace
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Release Date: October 10th 2017
Genre: Young Adult, Magical Realism, Fantasy, Paranormal
Synopsis:
The Memory Trees is a dark magical realism novel about a mysterious family legacy, a centuries-old feud, and a tragic loss that resurfaces when sixteen-year-old Sorrow returns to her mother’s family orchard for the summer.
Sorrow Lovegood’s life has been shaped by the stories of the women who came before her: brave, resilient women who settled long ago on a mercurial apple orchard in Vermont. The land has been passed down through generations, and Sorrow and her family take pride in its strange history. Their offbeat habits may be ridiculed by other townspeople—especially their neighbors, the Abrams family—but for the first eight years of her life, the orchard is Sorrow’s whole world.
Then one winter night everything changes. Sorrow’s sister Patience is tragically killed. Their mother suffers a mental breakdown. Sorrow is sent to live with her dad in Miami, away from the only home she’s ever known.
Now sixteen, Sorrow’s memories of her life in Vermont are maddeningly hazy; even the details of her sister’s death are unclear. She returns to the orchard for the summer, determined to learn ore about her troubled childhood and the family she left eight years ago. Why has her mother kept her distance over the years? What actually happened the night Patience died? Is the orchard trying to tell her something, or is she just imagining things?
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Kali Wallace studied geology and geophysics before she decided she enjoyed inventing imaginary worlds as much as she liked researching the real one. Her short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, F&SF, Asimov's, Lightspeed Magazine, and Tor.com. Her first novel, Shallow Graves, was published by Katherine Tegen Books/HarperCollins in 2016. Her second novel, The Memory Trees, will follow in 2017. She lives in southern California.
Filled with emotion and heart, Kali Wallace’s The Memory Trees is a beautiful story of one girl’s return to her childhood home and search for answers about the night her sister died and the mystery that surrounds her family.
Sorrow Lovegood comes from a long line of independent, determined, and gifted women each with secrets of her own. Each generation has found solace and at times experienced heartache in the family’s apple orchard in a small New England town. Eight years after the death of her sister Patience at the orchard, Sorrow is experiencing gaps in her memory. In order to move on and heal, she hopes that returning to the orchard will provide her with answers and fill in the missing pieces. She cautiously makes the journey back to her childhood home town where her mother and grandmother still live and where the centuries-old feud with the neighboring Abrams family is still going strong. Once there Sorrow learns and experiences much more than she ever expected.
Mysterious deaths, feuding neighbors, complicated mother-daughter relationships, family secrets, surprising revelations…there is a little bit of everything in The Memory Trees and so much I could talk about. Kali Wallace has created some truly fascinating characters and a setting that we slowly learn about as this mysterious and heartbreaking story unfolds. It all leads to a surprising conclusion.
Kali Wallace has a way with words and I was entranced by her beautiful, lyrical writing. With each vivid description, I became lost in Sorrow’s world and experiences and couldn't wait to see what we’d learn next. I became as curious as Sorrow and with every new discovery she made or unexpected memory that would surface, I wanted to know more about this complicated story and characters.
The matriarchal family structure of the Lovegood family fascinated me and I enjoyed the little glimpses we got of a few of Sorrow’s ancestors as the present was interspersed with moments from their point of view throughout the book as well as with flashbacks from Sorrow’s past as memories resurfaced. Through the ancestors’ stories we learn more about the family’s history on the orchard and their kinship with nature or more specifically trees as well as the feud. And Sorrow’s flashbacks also give a glimpse of life as a Lovegood and the unique and often troubled relationships the women share with each other and with the world they live in.
The Lovegood women share a past filled with heartache and isolation as they have all suffered losses and neighbors have shunned them for being different while making accusations of witchcraft for centuries. My heart ached for all of them as we learned about the history of the Lovegood and Abrams feud and its devastating results for both families. And as a side note the Lovegood women also have unique names such as Charity, Devotion, Pride, Joyful, and Perseverance…I’d actually love to see the Lovegood family tree.
The Memory Trees was a heartbreaking as well as fascinating, slow journey through the past and present of a unique family that led to some unexpected and surprising revelations and I enjoyed every word of it.
*I received a free digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.*
In The Memory Trees, Kali Wallace's writing is so beautiful and there are so many quotes and passages that I could have shared. It was a struggle to narrow it down and to pick ones that did not spoil the story. In fact, I'd recommend just reading the entire book.
But if you want to know a few of my favorites, here you go...
But if you want to know a few of my favorites, here you go...
1 signed hardcover copy of THE MEMORY TREES by Kali Wallace (US Only)
Also, There is a preorder giveaway: anybody who preorders by 10/10 can get a signed bookplate and some bookmarks if they send an email to thememorytrees@gmail.com
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This sounds fantastic and those excerpts are REALLY pulling me in. Adding to my TBR pile asap.
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