Publication Date: February 1, 2025
‘A gorgeous story full of emotion and a very special library.’ – Evie Woods, bestselling author of The Lost Bookshop
Some stories stay with us forever…
For forty-two years, Sally Harrison has been building a library.
Each year, on her daughter’s birthday, she adds a new book to her shelves – with a note in the front dedicated to her own greatest work.
But Ella – Sally’s only child – fled to Australia twenty-one years ago after a heated exchange, and never looked back. And though Sally still dutifully adds a new paperback to the shelves every time the clock strikes midnight on July 11th, her hopes of her daughter ever thumbing through the pages are starting to dwindle.
Then disaster strikes and Ella is forced to return to the home she once knew.
She is soon to discover that when one chapter ends, another will soon follow.
All you have to do is turn the page…
Journey through the pages of this heartwarming novel, where hope, friendship and second chances are written in the margins. Perfect for book lovers everywhere and fans of Sally Page’s The Keeper of Stories.
Note two words in the title of The Memory Library: memory and library. Author Kate Storey takes each word and builds a direction from each of these words. A mother and daughter were long ago estranged because of a misunderstanding, and now they will be back in each other’s daily lives.
Sally is a librarian in a small English community. She has gathered quite a following of diverse people to fill her days. She is the sort of woman whose reputation follows the adage of “the heartbeat of the town.” But who she longs to fill her life is her daughter, who has fled to Australia after her father died. Ella is married and has a young daughter. Sally has earned the trust and love of so many but cannot get enough forgiveness from her daughter to enjoy a familial relationship. She also has never enjoyed a visit from her granddaughter.
Ella feels justified in keeping the miles between them. After all, her mother betrayed her father and thus betrayed Ella, or so this is the distorted view she has held onto for 22 years. Work is what fills her life. She is a busy professional and smugly checks in with her mother through less-than-frequent phone calls.
When Sally has an accident, Ella feels guilted into making the trip back to her hometown for what she hopes is a quick arrangement for medical care for her mother. Upon arriving, she finds her childhood home has experienced a flood because of Sally’s carelessness of overflowing a bathtub. Now, she will also be forced to deal with the home repairs. Yet, the floors and walls are only part of the physical damage. Sally has built a library of books she carefully collected and dedicated to her daughter each year on Ella’s birthday. As Ella waits for her mother’s injuries to heal and the repairs to be made, she slowly opens her eyes to the reality of what she left behind and how fragile her mother has become.
I chose to savor The Memory Library as an audiobook. Jilly Bond and Imogen Wilde give voice to the characters with lovely regional accents. I am sure that the fragility of Ella and Sally’s story was portrayed well within the pages of the novel. However, there seemed to be a poignancy to hearing the unraveling and then the rebuilding of such a delicate relationship between a daughter and her ailing, elderly mother.
Some stories you don’t know you need to hear until they fill your senses. The Memory Library may stop you in the tracks of your busy life and make you reconsider where you are heading. 
Kate Storey started her career teaching English and Drama, and when she had her family, combined all three to write novels about family drama. Originally from Yorkshire, she now lives in a London suburb with her husband and two teenage daughters, so expects there’s plenty more drama to come. She has written three novels previously, but this is her debut novel in the book club space.
