From the author that brought us The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Anne Brashares, comes a new story, My Name is Memory, where love and romance springs from the realm of the mystics and fantasy. If you find yourself drawn to cosmically challenged star crossed lovers (ie you are a Twilight fan) you will LOVE this book. 
In this novel Brashares takes the concepts of soul mates to include past lives and reincarnation. In this novel we meet Daniel Grey, an “old soul” who has survived thousands of years through reincarnations and he uniquely has a memory of all his lives and the ability to recognize other souls from past lives reincarnated. This includes his soul mate Sophia.
Daniel laments, “to this day, there is no soul I recognize more immediately or more powerfully than hers. Whatever her age or her circumstances she makes a strong impression on herself and on me….. I didn’t presume to want her or deserve her in that way. If my brother had been kind to her and she had loved him, I would have taken joy in her joy and just been happy to get to be hear her sometimes….”
In the novel Brashares tells the story from both Daniel and Lucy’s perspective as narrators which provide unique insight to both characters. Ultimately we learn along with Daniel that you can’t spend your life waiting to live – you must live and love today with whatever you can. By the end of the novel the reader is hooked, wanting to know what will happen to these lovers and if they will be together in this lifetime or the next.
Fortunately, Brashares has two more novels in this series already planned. We can’t wait!
Penguin Group provided a review copy of this book. All opinions are my own.
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