Avery, Lara. The Memory Book. 368p. ebook available. Little, Brown/Poppy. Jul. 2016. Tr $17.99. ISBN 9780316283748.  

Gr 9 Up –Overachieving senior Sammie McCoy has her life clearly laid out. First, bring her debate team to victory at Nationals, then deliver her speech as valedictorian, and make the move to NYU to study economics and public policy before moving on to Harvard Law. Her plans get radically interrupted when she is diagnosed with Niemann-Pick Type C, a rare genetic disease that will initially affect her memory, rendering her vigorous studying moot, and that is ultimately fatal. Determined to fight the diagnosis, Sammie begins keeping a diary, figuring that when her memory fails her future self, she will have a way to reference her day-to-day life. Sammie’s voice is a bright, relatable, and uncompromising one, and when her inevitable decline begins, readers will be surprised and pained by it, right along with the book’s fiercely undeterred protagonist. Strengths abound in Avery’s touching novel, and Sammie’s relationships, both friendly and romantic, are no exception. Not knowing how to deal with the revelation of her illness, the teen’s closest friend, Maddie, pushes her away, and the protagonist’s relationships with gifted writer Stuart Shah and boy-next-door Cooper are intensified by her decline, in what feels like a genuinely complicated manner. VERDICT Fans of John Green’s work and Jennifer Niven’s All the Bright Places will be reaching for the tissue box at the book’s tear-inducing end.–Joanna Sondheim, Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School, New York City