TLC Book Tours Review: The Memory Painter by Gwendolyn Womack

Title: The Memory Painter
Author: Gwendolyn Womack
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Picador
Publish Date: April 28, 2015
Source: TLC Book Tours

What's the Story?:

From Goodreads.com: "Bryan Pierce is an internationally famous artist whose paintings have dazzled the world. But there’s a secret to Bryan’s success: Every canvas is inspired by an unusually vivid dream. When Bryan awakes, he possesses extraordinary new skills . . . like the ability to speak obscure languages and an inexplicable genius for chess. All his life, he has wondered if his dreams are recollections—if he is re-experiencing other people’s lives.

Linz Jacobs is a brilliant neurogeneticist, absorbed in decoding genes that help the brain make memories—until she is confronted with an exact rendering of a recurring nightmare at one of Bryan’s shows. She tracks down the elusive artist, and their meeting triggers Bryan’s most powerful dream yet: visions of a team of scientists who, on the verge of discovering a cure for Alzheimer’s, died in a lab explosion decades ago.

As Bryan becomes obsessed with the mysterious circumstances surrounding the scientists’ deaths, his dreams begin to reveal what happened at the lab, as well as a deeper mystery that may lead all the way to ancient Egypt. Together, Bryan and Linz start to discern a pattern. But a deadly enemy watches their every move, and he will stop at nothing to ensure that the past stays buried."

My Two Cents:

"The Memory Painter" is the story of Bryan and Linz. Bryan is a famous painter who paints incredibly vivid scenes based on incredibly vivid dreams. Linz is a brilliant scientist. Together, their relationship is more than what it seems on its face. Filled with historical detail, reincarnation, and romance, Womack offers up a very unique story line that will appeal to many different kinds of readers. 

The story line of this book really stood out for me. I love historical fiction but don't often read books that have a paranormal bend to them alongside the historical story. Again, reincarnation plays a huge role in this book and I loved all of the historical detail that's given alongside the present day parts of the story where Bryan and Linz are trying to figure it all out. The inclusion of the idea of reincarnation was so interesting to me and really held my attention and made me think a lot!

I liked both of the main characters very much but wanted to know a little bit more about both of their backgrounds and what made them tick. I felt like I couldn't get very close to Bryan in particular and his memories drive so much of the story. I would have loved more detail on both of them. I wanted to understand so much more about them! This did limit my overall engagement with the book a little bit. Overall, this is a good story but I wanted to know the characters better in order to be more engaged.