Blog Tour; The Memory Dress by Jade Beer

Publisher: Berkley

On Sale Date:  November 5 2024

Pages: 400

I reviewed a digital review copy from the publisher

(this review contains spoilers)

Jayne lives in an apartment building in Bath, England in 2018. She only knows the single woman neighbour with two young daughters, as she walks their dog daily, as Jayne is a part time dog walker and florist. Further on, she lives a quiet life on her own. Until she meets her elderly neighbor Meredith, as her door is open one day and the dog she walks from the other neigbor runs into Merediths apartment. And this is how without knowing, Meredith and Jayne walks into each other's life. Meredith is suffering from dementia, and her apartment is one big and smelly mess that needs cleaning, notices Jayne. She also notices that Meredith is very lonely, and Meredith keeps on mentioning that her husband William is ''missing''. Slowly on, Jayne gains the trust of Meredith, and visits her as much as possible with a bouget of forget-me-nots. Jayne gets to know more about Meredith when she shows her her  messy ''memory room'' with contains many memories from her past. Jayne notices a beautiful ball gown draped carelessly on one of the chairs in Meredith's memory room, and by asking more about the dress, she learns that in a previous and better time, Meredith was the costume desinger of many of Princess Diana's dresses and outfits, back around 1988, where she met her future husband William in the workspace. But what happened to William, why is he missing? Meredith is sure of it he can come home every minute, and Jayne finds out Meredith had a daugher named Fiona once. Slowly on, she tries to figure out where William and Fiona are now, with taking Meredith on outings to places in London that played a part in Meredith's life with William. And Jayne is determined to trace down Fiona..

During the story, the neighbors in  the building get more connected and help each other, and a romance between Jayne and neighbor Jake starts too..

The Memory Dress is a beautiful book and also a very moving one. I really liked the style it was written in. The storyline was fantastic, it was easy to follow and it all felt very realistic. The characters in it could be your neighbors. I liked how at first the neighbors had no connection to each other, but because of Jayne and Meredith this completely changed for the better. Jayne is a character you immediately like as a reader. She is just always in to help someone. And so she helps the lonely Meredith, who suffered badly from dementia and needed care very bad. The story truly shows the sadness of dementia through Meredith. It was truly heartbreaking that from the start till the end she believed that William could arrive home anytime for dinner.  While Jayne knows, and as a reader you feel it, he will never come home again. But Jayne did a great job to make life a bit less lonely and more liveable for Meredith, without invading her privacy and in a very respectful way, altough Meredith at many times forgot who Jayne was and thought she was her estranged daughter Fiona. What I also liked was how the chapters changed from the past from 1988 till the present time to 2018, and you read Meredith's past which was linked to the dresses of Princess Diana. What I also really liked was the romance that bloomed up between her and Jake, that was really sweet!

The Memory Dress is a fantastic new book, with an amazingly strong and good storyline and an even awesome cast of main and side characters, I truly loved it!