The Memory Bookshop

By Song Yu-jeong
Translated by Shanna Tan

Available on Bookshop.org

ARC Review

William Morrow Paperbacks
July 7, 2026

Content note: This book deals with grief, depression, and suicidal ideation.

I received an advance e-copy and physical copy of The Memory Bookshop from William Morrow Paperbacks through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

People treat grief like it comes with an expiration date. Seven years out, you're supposed to be functional and more or less over it. When you're not, the problem becomes you.

What It's About

That's about where Jiwon is when the Memory Bookshop finds her. Her mother died seven years ago and she is still grieving, still depressed, and the people who are supposed to help have run out of patience for it. They write her off with a prescription and tell her, in so many words, to move on. She doesn't. A sudden downpour pushes her into a bookshop she has never seen, where the shelves are full of her own memories and a curator offers her a deal. She can go back into them, paying for each trip with time off the end of her own life.

The price is supposed to be a deterrent, but that only works on someone who wants to keep on living. Jiwon doesn't, not now, so she trades without flinching. She doesn't even know the rate. Each trip costs her some unknown amount of the time she has left, and she goes anyway, because the time ahead of her doesn't feel like much to protect. So the bookshop was never really after her time. It's betting the trips back will make her want to keep it.

What Stuck With Me

What the trips actually do, I'll leave for you to find. The magic here isn't wish fulfillment, and what it gives her is harder and more honest than a fix. That's the reason the book works.

I'll be straight about where it landed for me. You can sense early on roughly where it's headed, and the pull is emotional more than it is suspense. What makes it worth it is the road, watching her get there, the way she relates to her mother as an adult looking back at moments she couldn't read at the time. It didn't take me over the finish line into a book I'd press into everyone's hands. It's a good one, told with real heart, that shows us what needs to be seen.

My Takeaway

Heartfelt, not cozy. The cover and the comps will tell you cozy. A woman seven years into depression, deciding in real terms whether she wants to be alive, is not cozy. Go in knowing that.

Definitely worth the read.

And if you're reading this from somewhere near where Jiwon starts, please talk to someone before you go anywhere close to her bargain. Help is real, and it's worth reaching for. In the US, you can call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

Get the book: BOOKSHOP.ORG | AMAZON | Libro.fm

If You Liked This

If you liked the memory-and-time mechanic, try Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, translated by Geoffrey Trousselot. Same idea that you can return to the past but can't rewrite it, only change what you carry back.

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I received an advance copy of The Memory Bookshop from William Morrow Paperbacks through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.