I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Seventeen-year-old Yena Bae is spending the summer in Busan, South Korea, working at her mom’s memory-erasing clinic. She feels lost and disconnected from people, something she’s felt ever since her best friend, Lucas, moved away four years ago without a word, leaving her in limbo.

Eighteen-year-old Lucas Pak is also in Busan for the summer, visiting his grandpa, who was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. But he isn’t just here for a regular visit—he’s determined to get his beloved grandpa into the new study running at the clinic, a trial program seeking to restore lost memories.

When Yena runs into Lucas again, she’s shocked to see him and even more shocked to discover that he doesn’t remember a thing about her. He’s completely erased her from his memories, and she has no idea why.

As the two reconnect, they unravel the mystery and heartache of what happened between them all those years ago—and must now reckon with whether they can forge a new beginning together.

Short and Sweet Review

Yena is spending the summer in Busan, South Korea, in hopes to figure out what she wants to do in the future, but in the meantime she’ll be working at her mom’s clinic. At the clinic they use sound to erase memories. Lucas Pak is in Busan for the summer visiting his grandfather who recently got diagnosed with Alzheimers. Lucas is hoping he can get his grandfather into the study at the clinic to restore memories. When Yena bumps into Lucas she recognizes him immediately as her childhood friend that moved away but Lucas doesn’t remember her at all, which is how Yena learns he went through the memory erasing procedure at the clinic and got rid of all his memories at Yena. Over the summer Yena and Lucas begin spending time together, Yena hopes to unravel the mystery of why he would get the procedure and Lucas grapples with whether memories should even be tampered with.

This is the second book I’ve read by Suk and she comes up with the most interesting stories and it’s hard to put them down. In this book Yena is our main character and she’s working at her mother’s sound clinic going through the archives. The clinic uses sounds to erase certain memories that people have, which is an interesting concept and as we read we can see the pros and cons to doing it or not. We get both Yena and Lucas’s POVs I liked both and they’re very different people. Yena is a bit more carefree and go with the flow and Lucas is more sure of what he wants in life. We find out that these two knew each other when they were younger but only Yena knows this. Throughout the book we see Yena and Lucas hanging out and finding different sounds for Lucas’s grandpa just in case he makes it into the study. Yena being close to Lucas ends up causing side effects because he shouldn’t remember her but sometimes some things seem familiar. I did like seeing Lucas with his grandpa and all of the memories they have together, we can tell it’s hard for Lucas to see his grandpa going through Alzheimers but his grandfather is firm on his stance of not doing the trial. We also get to see the relationship between Yena and her mother grow from a Scientist who seems to only focus on her work to a mother trying to spend time with her daughter. There’s a lot of heartfelt moments in this book and I think one of my favorite things was the short chapters with the sound clips that gave us a glimpse into Yena and Lucas’s friendship.

Overall, this was a captivating book. I was so immersed in what was happening with the science, but also unraveling the mystery of our characters and their experience with the clinic and erasing or restoring memories. This is a great book to read if you’re into science fiction that isn’t hard to understand but also want a contemporary/romance.