Synopsis:

Which moment should I go back to? Past regrets unspooled in my mind. All the what-ifs.

Jiwon’s life has been slowly disintegrating since her mom died. Until one day, caught in a downpour, she comes across a mysterious bookstore. Uneasy, she turns to leave when a voice calls ‘If you open that door—You can leave, but you can never come back here.’

The Memory Bookshop stores all of one’s memories within an infinite number of books and appears to those who are looking for a reason to live. Its manager, ‘K’, offers visitors the chance to travel back three times, in exchange for part of their futures.

Browsing the shelves, Jiwon must choose whether to revisit three chapters of her life. But will changing the past really rewrite her future? Only The Memory Bookshop has the answers – and it’ll teach Jiwon about what it really means to live.

Genre: Magical Realism
Publisher: Harper Fiction
Pub Date: 12 March 2026

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This book was sent to me for free by the publisher.

Review:

Jiwon finds herself spiralling. Her life has been sliding downhill since her mother passed away. While trying to keep out of a sudden downpour, she finds herself stepping into a bookstore unlike any she has seen before. Here, she meets Manager K, and learns that she can travel back to three ‘chapters’ from her life in exchange for some of her future…

One thing I particularly enjoyed about this book was that we stayed with the same character through the entire story. Often with this kind of ‘healing fiction’ we meet several characters over the course of the book. While I don’t mind that at all, I did find it refreshing to spend more time with one character.

That character was Jiwon, and I found her to be a refreshing protagonist. While she is desperate to change the past, her journey within the bookshop changes her, and she learns that often the way forward is to look at ourselves in the present and change what we are in order to meet the future.

The underlying theme in this book is the death of a loved one and the grief and turmoil in your life after the event. The longing to see them one last time, the regret over a missed conversation, the desperation to hold on to any small thing that will keep the past, and therefore them, alive. The book tackles this well, with a lot of emotion and care.

Overall I enjoyed this short and poignant book. It is very similar in theme to a lot of translated healing fiction of late, but I enjoyed the unique approach to what might otherwise have been a very same-y story. If you are after something to scratch a Before The Coffee Gets Cold itch, this might very well be it!