** I was provided an electronic ARC of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.**

Lauren Mansy's novel, The Memory Thief, follows a teenaged girl, Julietta, in a world where memories are used as currency. Memories can be traded, stolen, sold, and more. The Gifted have varying types of abilities regarding the manipulation of memories, where the Ungifted have no such talents. Julietta, who is Gifted, has been given a date by the cruel ruler of Craewick, Madame, who will be auctioning Julietta's mother's memories. The auction will kill Julietta's mother. To save her mother, Julietta seeks assistance of the guild of thieves, The Shadows, that she once betrayed. Of course, a quest results and a whole mess begins.

I was very much intrigued with the world that Mansy built for this novel. I liked the set up of the four Realms, and the "power" system of the Gifted seemed to be very well-developed with lots of room for variation. I even liked the concepts of memories being traded, stolen, etc. and found the application to be something fresh and welcome.

I did have some struggles with the writing style of this novel. I understand the importance of memories to the content of the novel, but the constant insertion of memory information in flashback form created a disjointed narrative. I felt that with as much development went into the world, the power systems, and the ideas of the plot, relatively limited development went into the characters beyond surface level. As a reader who can overlook weak or commonplace plot points in favor of a well developed character, my reading experience for this book was very much detached and very surface-level rather than being drawn in.

I also found that each of the twists that were introduced were somewhat transparent, made things easier for the characters, and sometimes just confusing and unnecessary choices. I definitely thought the romantic interest was completely unnecessary and thought the book would have been better served by excluding it entirely.

Overall, while I enjoyed the world and power system, the novel fell solidly into "just okay" for me because of the aforementioned things. While I'm not upset at the novel in the slightest, I don't know that I will continue with the series that seems to be hinted to come.