Book review: Things We Keep

I just finished a book entitled Things We Keep, by Sally Hepworth, and it was an amazing book. The narrators who read the book for the NLS talking book program, were finominal! I highly suggest that you get this book on audio book, ebook. or in print. It’s hard to put down, and it’s a book that I will remember for a long time to come
Things We Keep is a book about two young people with different types of dementia, and a lady who works as cook and cleaning lady, who find the truth about love. Anna has been diagnosed with early onset alzheimers disease at the age of 38. She started forgetting things long before her diagnosis, such as the lisense number and make and modle of her car, and other things. She was volunterily placed in Rosalind House, an assisted living facility for seniors, after her youngest nephew was splattered by burning chocolate, while attempting to take the pan off the stove, after the fondu started to burn. While at Rosalind House, she meets Luke, a patient with frontal lobe dementia. Eve is a widow with a young daughter.
When Eve’s husband falsifies financial records, he kills himself before the government can catch up to him, leaving his wife and daughter to suffer alone. Eve is hired as the cook for Rosalind House, and gets to know the patients. Although Anna tells her story from the time before Eve came into the picture, you discover how she and Luke become closer and closer. Although Anna’s brother and Luke’s sister want them to be apart, to keep them safe, they still find ways to be together. Eve is the one to show Jack the truth about what can happen when someone isn’t allowed to be happy.
I won’t spoil the book itself for you, but I can tell you, that you get an idea how devistating it can be for Anna when she looses her memory. Even though this is a work of fiction, it taught me how Alzheimers effects a person’s memory and depth perception. For example, Luke sees the door way in front of him, but high steps over the entrance to another room, because he can’t tell a flat surface from a rased one. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but there is an incident that causes Jack and Luke’s sister Sarah to request that the two be kept apart from one another. I can tell you that once you read this book, you will see the world of the characters, including Eve’s daughter, in a different light. I personally give this book a five star rating, because the author kept me sucked into the story from the beginning.