From the publisher:
If you could rewrite your life story, would you dare? That’s the question at the heart of this charming and propulsive debut novel about love, life, and a woman finding herself and what it means to be happy and successful.
Do you ever feel like your life doesn’t measure up to everyone else’s—and wonder if you just didn’t get the memo helping you make the right choices?
Jenny Green dreads her upcoming college reunion. Once top of her class, the thirty-five-year-old finds herself stuck in a life that isn’t the one she expected. Her promising career has flamed out (literally) and her deadbeat boyfriend is cheating on her (again). All her friends seem to have it all figured it out, enjoying glittering lives and careers that she can only envy from the sidelines. Did she just not get the memo they all did?
As it turns out, she didn’t!
When she arrives at her alma mater for the festivities, she receives a text from an unlisted number.
“Jenny Green: please collect your memo.”
Somewhere on campus, a discreet female-led organization provides comprehensive memos to select students, a set of instructions that are a blueprint for success.
The first time around, Jenny didn’t receive hers. Now, she’s being given the second chance she wants—an opportunity to relive her life and make all the right decisions this time around. But at what price?
Smart, addictive, bittersweet, and ultimately triumphant, The Memo will enchant readers of In Five Years and Cassandra in Reverse as well as fans of Emma Straub and Maria Semple.
“Do you ever wonder if everyone else somehow got a secret leg up, insider knowledge, or even just a map to navigate the proverbial lay of the land? Such is the premise of Rachel Dodes and Lauren Mechling’s charming new novel. . . . A modernized Sliding Doors set amid a delightfully specific milieu, this is a paranormal parable with a very relatable heart.” — Vogue
https://amzn.to/3xKJvkO
This writing duo’s debut is a tribute to a world of possibility. When her college career counselor suggests to Jenny Green that she quit school a few weeks before graduation, she does not take that advice. While her friends move on to uber-successful careers, Jenny feels like she is stagnating. She wonders if everyone else got the memo and learned to succeed, and why she did not. She’s not thrilled with her assistant job, she’s pretty sure her boyfriend is cheating on her, and she has to deal with her upcoming fifteen year college reunion. Then she receives an anonymous text message urging her to take the memo and follow the instructions; she does, and her whole world starts shifting on its axis. With a whiff of time travel Jenny bounces between her old life and this possible new life, but eventually, she has to make a not inconsiderable decision and face that life head-on.
Verdict: Millennial women, in particular, may be drawn to this story. Readalikes for this original literary debut include The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano by Donna Freitas, Cassandra in Reverse by Holly Smale, or The Good Part by Sophie Cousens.
©Library Journal, 2024
6/2024 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch
THE MEMO by Rachel Dodes & Lauren Mechling. Harper Perennial (June 18, 2024). ISBN: 978-0063319356. 336p.
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