Thank you Colored Pages Book Tour and Harper Collins for this opportunity.

I listened to the audio via audible along with the physical.

Lucas and Yena both came to Busan for one thing that summer and ended with so much more. A true love.

First read from this author and I truly can’t wait to read more. I don’t think I’ve read a book with this setting and plot before. Sarah Suk, the author, wrote a very beautiful book filled with love, grieving, happiness, Alzheimer’s and much more in each chapter. Love the duel povs especially in a story like this. Reading how the characters find their way back to each other while having to rediscover what drifted them apart in the first place. My favorite thing was seeing their friendship/love develop from the view point of stationary items. Giving us, the readers, a captured in time by photo kind of moment. All of this really helped develop the characters and the story as a whole. Not only the growth they have with each other but within themselves and their families. They were able to communicate very well about their feelings.

I love the idea around memories but it also shows how deep within our being and our brains somethings you just can’t simply forget.

“𝙋𝙚𝙤𝙥𝙡𝙚 𝙬𝙝𝙤 𝙙𝙤𝙣’𝙩 𝙘𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙖𝙗𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙖𝙣𝙮𝙢𝙤𝙧𝙚 𝙨𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙𝙣’𝙩 𝙜𝙚𝙩 𝙩𝙤 𝙝𝙤𝙡𝙙 𝙤𝙣 𝙩𝙤 𝙥𝙞𝙚𝙘𝙚𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙮𝙤𝙪.”

Seventeen-year-old Yena Bae is spending her summer working at her mother’s memory-erasing clinic in Busan, a place where people go to forget. Feeling adrift since her best friend, Lucas Pak, moved away without a word four years ago, Yena is shocked to run into him again and even more shocked to discover he has no recollection of her. Through their reconnection, she is forced to confront the weight of loss and expectations, as well as the question: Do parents really know best? and if memories connect us to others, what happens when they’re taken away?

I loved this book so much 🥹 Woven into the plot of lost friendships and second chances is a bittersweet and thought-provoking story that explores the delicate, fragile nature of memory. Despite tackling some themes that would usually feel quite heavy, I found it to be a well-paced read that handled those themes with care and grace, without diminishing the importance of any of them. One of my favorite parts while reading was the addition of sounds as mildly sentient, which gave the book a very nostalgic and tender vibe that hasn’t left me since I finished the book.

Thanks to NetGalley for the e-arc and colored pages book tour for the gifted copy 💖

Thanks so much to Quill Tree Books (@epicreads) for an advanced copy of this book for review!

A gripping, emotional story of two childhood friends navigating the fallout of one erasing their memory of the other.

^from the publisher!

What a beautifully told story! Really don’t want to give too much away as it’s best you don’t know anything other than the premise going in. But I will say - the parallels between Lucas and his grandfather and what happens with Yena and her mother/Yena and Lucas are so well written! The ending is incredibly well earned and I was really rooting for these two kids.

Also, a totally unique way of storytelling was used here. The wind chimes and the water had me quite emotional.

Fully recommend picking this one up!

First of all, I love the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind comparison. I love the idea of what we would do if we could forget someone and what we would have left. This is a central theme swirling around Meet Me at Blue Hour. Is removing our memories an act of mercy? Of escape? And what happens to those around us? Suk continuously allows us to figure out how we feel as Yena and Lucas encounter memory, grief, and love throughout. It feels both surreal and encompassing while also telling a story about second chances.

"Seeing Lucas again this summer, I realize that as much as I've missed him, I've missed myself even more."

Thank you to Colored Pages Book Tour for inviting me to celebrate Sarah Suk's latest release! Happy pub day to this beautiful and heartfelt novel, my first read of Suk's (but it definitely won't be my last!). Yena has struggled to feel attached to anything or anyone after her childhood best friend Lucas moved away without a word. But while working at her mother's memory erasure clinic in Busan over the summer, Yena discovers the unthinkable—proof that Lucas erased all of his memories of her. Things only get more complicated when Lucas arrives at the clinic, hoping desperately to get his grandfather off of the waitlist for a memory recovery study.

I love YA romances that touch on deep themes, and Suk certainly delivers! We meet multiple characters who have been touched by the ripple effects of these memory loss procedures as Yena is processing her own feelings about being forgotten and her wishes for more support from her parents. Lucas is navigating his grandfather's Alzheimer diagnosis and his parents' overreliance on his help with the family restaurant.

But I'd be remiss not to mention that the book has so many fun and sweet moments interlaced with these emotional themes! Yena and Lucas' excursions make me want to travel to Busan to see Bosu Book Street, Jagalchi Market, the Beach Train, and the Sky Capsule. There are delicious descriptions of Korean food and cute moments between the two teens as they grow closer. I enjoyed the dual perspectives of Yena and Lucas, plus the flashbacks to their prior relationship. (Each flashback was associated with a specific sound because sounds are the key to the memory erasure procedure—think popping corn at the movie theater where they met, or a wind chime given as a gift.) With its gorgeous prose and moving exploration of first loves, familial bonds, and the costs of forgetting, Meet Me At Blue Hour is a must-add to your spring TBR.

Meet Me At Blue Hour features a mix of futuristic sci-fi and nostalgic tech to bring memory erasure into the spotlight with all its potential—good and bad.

This is told from first-person POV, swapping between Yena and Lucas, as well as the perspective of a sound artifact from their past. I loved this method of storytelling as we get to see the characters now, essentially strangers to each other, and their relationship as kids. It really helped to build up the characters and I loved how that connection and spark carried them through the story.

This book also showed Yena and Lucas finding the words to communicate well with their family. I appreciated their growth as they learned to put their feelings into words and the impact it had on their relationship with their families.

I found the deep dive into the ethics of memory erasure was interesting. There was dialogue around the pros and cons of messing with something like memories, the addiction to losing memories associated with guilt or sadness (i.e., not learning to cope), along with the impact it has on the people involved in the forgotten memories. It really dug into the impact it can have on families, but also the impact it can have psychologically. One point was that the body remembers, even if the brain doesn't, leading to emotional responses to triggers people don't know exist. I found this fascinating, heartbreaking, and relevant, as our society starts to really think about ethical technology.

I also felt like this book was a love letter to Korea—the history, the food, and the nostalgia of times past, but also relationships built in the present. The way Lucas and Yena traveled around made these beautiful pockets of sunshine and joy throughout a book that deals with some heavier subjects. I loved those moments so much!

Meet Me At Blue Hour was masterfully constructed. The structure of the story made this a breeze to read, while also making me think ethically and feel all the feels. Definitely going to be a book that lingers with me for a while.

TW: grief, injury detail, secondary character with Alzheimer's; mentions panic attacks, PTSD, death of a parent

Plot: 4.5/5
Characters: 5/5
World Building: 5/5
Writing: 5/5
Pacing: 4.5/5
Overall: 5/5

ARC gifted by HCC Frenzy in exchange for an honest review.

Really fun and beautiful novel about friendship, romance, intergen relationships, and if you’d erase memories if you could. A fast read with such a compelling story line, highly recommend it.

“How many times can you say goodbye to one person?”

If you had the chance to erase your most painful memory, would you? Sori of Us Clinic in Busan, South Korea, specializes in memory care—more specifically, memory erasure. This is where 17-year-old Korean-Canadian Yena finds herself working over the summer while visiting her mother and head of the clinic, Dr. Bae. When the Sori Clinic begins a new study involving memory recovery, hundreds of people show up at the clinic with hopes of squeezing their loved ones in. One of these hopefuls is Lucas Pak, Yena’s ex-best friend from Canada, visiting his harabeoji who is suffering from Alzheimer's. When their paths finally cross again, Yena expects to find answers to why their friendship ended so abruptly. The only problem is, Lucas has no idea who she is.

Meet Me at Blue Hour is a delicate story that explores loss, love, and the importance of the past. The novel features only a handful of characters, which allows Suk to stitch together individual characteristics and traits to form a close-knit community for readers to settle into. It is within this close community that important, long-lasting memories are made, and memory care is a topic that I believe is not discussed enough. My mother is a CNA and has had several Alzheimer’s and Dementia patients since the start of her career, and I appreciate Suk for spreading awareness about the effects memory loss has on not only the patient but everyone involved. In a sense, Meet Me at Blue Hour was like a memory itself. The sights, sounds, and interactions between characters felt familiar, and although I did not experience Korean culture growing up, I believe most things in childhood are universal. The expectations Lucas and Yena had for themselves were very clearly a direct result of their upbringing, which Suk explored through phone calls and conversations between the teens and their families. Although I wish the sense of betrayal felt by Yena and Lucas towards the end was exaggerated even more, Meet Me at Blue Hour is an easy yet meaningful read full of valuable life lessons.

This YA romance from a Canadian author I've enjoyed in the past sounded interesting with the MMC having erased his memories of his love interest but sadly it just fell a little flat for me. I liked that the MMC travelled to Korea to help his grandfather get into a study to aid with his Alzheimer's but other than that the romance didn't resonate with me. Would recommend for fans of Dustin Thao who enjoy a lot of emotional angst and forced separation. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital and audio copy in exchange for my honest review.

This was a cute YA romance that navigated friendship and complicated families. I enjoyed the premise of the novel and the idea of the memory removal, and age appropriate romance.
The mix of romanized Korean words and having them already translated into English is a pet peeve of mine, but I tolerated it enough to get through the novel.
The cover for this book is also gorgeous. I would definitely recommend this to younger people as an easy, medium paced romance novel.

This book was phenomenal! I really loved the characters. They were so interesting. The premise of the book, I felt, was also very unique, and what Suk did with it was just amazing! The writing was also really great.

When I first started the book, the little interludes confused me, but as I kept reading, I began to realize they were all the memories that Lucas had forgotten about Yena. It was such a nice touch to do that rather than explain all at once all of the memories he forgot. Also the plot twist! I was not expecting Yena to have also gotten a memory erasure procedure too. I was also so relieved when I found out that Lucas didn't intentionally forget her, but I was so disappointed in his parents. They couldn't see beyond what they wanted for him and didn't see who he was until the end. Also, I was not expecting Danielle to be an undercover journalist. And the exposé was soooooo good!

I'm so glad Yena and Lucas got together at the end but I kind of hoped to see more of them in love. Anyway, this was such a great book. I can't wait to start recommending it!

I also work in a library and convinced my boss to pre-order it for our YA collection!! So excited!!

Thank you NetGalley for an eARC.
This book had me laughing and crying and feeling ALL the feels (and craving Korean food). Zero spice. It does have a sweet friends to lovers plot while being set in a scifi Korea where memories can be erased using sound technology. I love that this book explored the ethical debate on areas of science without taking a pro or con side. This book also deals with memory loss (Alzheimer's disease) and working through a family member's diagnosis as well as divorce and difficult family relationships. Everything is handled so well that I would definitely recommend this book.

In a world where memories can be erased, people can be helped with trauma or just take bad thoughts away. With this main seed for a story, Sarah Suk has created another unusual speculative novel. Meet Me at Blue Hour is a Young Adult book with a teenager trying to figure out portions of her life. Then, during a visit to Korea, she sees someone who she thought was out of her life. This happening creates quite an upheaval for many of the characters. With the Korean setting of family and food, this work gives similar vibes of Suk’s last book which was a favorite of mine in 2023. However this one is not as sharp at causing the emotions for me as her last. I will be checking out all of her books from now on though, as I enjoy her smooth writing style. The chapters are brief and propel me to the next one. She writes speculative ideas which seem feasible and affect the characters lives in an interesting way. I look forward to Suk’s next creation.

The story felt like a retelling of "Eternal Sunshine" for teens. It was fine but did not ring true for me, I wish the science had been more believable, Granted I"m an older audience.

Thank you so much to Colored Pages Book Tours, for having me as one of the tour hosts for Meet Me at Blue Hour by one of my favourite authors Sarah Suk!

I absolutely adored this stunning exploration of memory, how it shapes us, and where its absence leaves us.

I loved how you get to see memories from the perspective of the things that played a part in them, which is something I have never seen before in a book!

It was great how the concept of “knowing whats best” for others, and having respect of their choices (and simply giving someone a choice) was explored, a very important topic, that needs to be discussed more often than what it currently is.

I cannot recommend this book to you all enough, please do yourself a favour and read it!!

Gosh, I loved this one. Yena and Lukas stole my heart immediately, and I even found myself intrigued by the side characters. The story was so compelling and original, I found it hard to put down, constantly turning the pages to see how everything would play out. I can't wait to recommend this to teens looking for magical, big-hearted, emotional stories.

How I loved this book! From the very start until the very end, it was a story that sucked me in and that I could not stop reading! Yena and Lukas were amazing MCs, each with their own foibles and challenges, and totally believable. I thought I would hate Lukas' parents about a third of the way through, but as the whole story unfolded, I found myself able to understand their motivations, and Yena's mother's as well. Most of all, there was a magical quality to the relationship between Yena and Lukas that I will remember for a long time. This was a stunning story. I will recommend this to everyone, young people and adults alike.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

If you could erase pieces of your memory, would you do it? Yena Bae just graduated from high school and does not know what she wants to do with her life. To help her, her mother asks her to travel to Busan and work for her clinic. Yena’s mom is Dr. Bae, a pioneer in the science of memory erasure. Her clinic, Soori Clinic, helps patients to erase their memories through sound. Now, the clinic is doing an experimental study on memory recovery. On the other hand, we have Lucas Pak, a young man who dreams of becoming a chef at his parent's restaurant. He decided to go to Busan to enroll his grandfather in the memory recovery study at Soori Clinic. All of this is because his grandad suffers from Alzheimer's. Everything gets complicated when his and Yena’s paths cross. For her, he is the friend who disappeared from her life. To him, she is a stranger who feels too familiar. The reason? Lucas erased Yena’s existence, and now she has to decide if she wants to know why he did it or if she would let things be as they are.

This book brings up the topic of memory erasure procedures. As I started to read, I was intrigued, like any other person would be. Nonetheless, when I saw how Yena suffered, I changed my mind. Now, if you ask me, memory erasure should not exist. As you discover on Meet Me at Blue Hour, memory erasure is not an exact science. They can erase memories but not the feelings and emotions related to those events. In other words, these people go through life without knowing why they feel that way. Second, this decision affects the one doing the procedure but also affects those around. The closest thing to compare is the aftermath of Alzheimer's. When a patient starts to forget his life, the people around him are sad because of all the things they can remember, but the other person does not. Now, imagine someone doing this voluntarily. It would create feelings of sadness and betrayal for those who love him. Also, if you ask me, I do not believe in messing up people’s minds because everything we have lived has shaped us into who we are now. Deleting something or someone could end up erasing a part of ourselves like it happened to Yena.

This story was narrated from three different points of view. For once, we have Yena. She is in the process of discovering who she is and who she wants to be. It does not help that, during that period of reflection, people keep telling her that she goes through life without direction. Likewise, her relationship with her mom affected her. Since the divorce of her parents, Yena and her mother have not had a relationship. Her mother has become so devoted to her job that she forgot about Yena. It got to the point that she hurt Yena and Lucas. Likewise, what I take from Yena is that she never stops trying to find her path in life. She never gave up, and that is something we all have to imitate.

Lucas Pak is different than Yena. He is a decisive boy with goals and plans to reach. His dream is to be a chef at his family's restaurant. Nonetheless, his parents are so overprotective that they limit him to the point of asphyxiating him. When he graduated, he decided to travel to Busan and spend quality time with his uncle and grandad. However, he had an ulterior motive; he wanted to enroll his grandad in the memory-restoring study. From him, I learned that we can not force people to do things even if we think that is the best for them. We have to respect their decisions. Also, he is an example of what happens when someone takes away your right to choose. In his case, this action was more painful to outsiders like his grandfather because Lucas could not remember what he lost and that it was involuntary.

Lastly, the third point of view is hidden between the chapters of this book. When I found out about it, I marveled at the inventive skills of the author. We all know that Yena and Lucas have known each other since they were kids, but we do not know the whole story. Nonetheless, the book tells us that story, but in a peculiar way. Between Yena and Luca’s points of view, there are chapters with object names that tell the story of both main leads. The interesting part is that the narrator of these chapters is not one of them, and neither is an outsider. Those chapters are narrated from the point of view of the objects related to those specific memories. That is why we have chapters like the first one in which a popcorn machine narrates how little Yena and little Lucas met. So, this book proposes that memories are related to objects and sounds.

Meet Me at Blue Hour was a book I did not expect, but I was grateful for having the opportunity to read it. The author invites us to reflect on the importance and impact of memories on the individual and those around them. I did not expect to be so immersed in the reading that, in some parts, I had to hold back the tears because I was reading in public. Sometimes, I asked myself what I would do if I were in Yena’s shoes, and someone I loved decided to erase me from his life. Like almost all the characters, I found myself in a mix of emotions that went from being mad to being hurt to ending up sad. That is why if you are looking for a story out of the ordinary and entertaining this is the best choice.

What if memory erasing is a thing….?

This book truly has heart and is a nostalgic read….

It takes place in Busan, South Korea, featuring Yena, spending the summer with her mother, Dr. Bae, the founder of Sori Clinic, which is renowned for erasing memories through sound…Her mother was worried she was too carefree in life and was disinterested in anything. Ironically, she bumps into Lucas Pak, her childhood best friend who she used to crush on whom she lost touch with 4 years ago and realizes that he has completely forgotten about her. Lucas is visiting his grandfather in Busan, who was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer's. He has been hunting for ways to help his grandfather and finds out about Sori Clinic’s new study on recovering memories. He was hoping to enroll his grandfather there. As the study is full, Yena offers to help Lucas get a spot as she wants to help him, having known his grandfather…Will the reconnection lead to questions being answered about why Lucas’s memory of Yena is missing, or will it lead to heartache?

Told from the perspective of both Yena and Lucas with some interludes of sounds representing their relationship, which was used to take away Lucas’ memories - it makes for a very riveting read. It was so beautiful to see how Lucas and Yena's friendship came together in a medley of sounds. It is also so joyful and sad to see Lucas and Yena still gravitating to each other with the heartache of remembrance and the confusion of loss…Their togetherness is just lovely; their romance is so sweet yet so heart-wrenching at the same time. It’s just beautiful to watch Lucas fall for Yena again.

I could not stop reading, wanting to know what happened next. The writing was so captivating…I could “hear” the sounds of the train, the clatter of the fish market, the chimes of the bamboo forest and the lapping of waves - it feels so vivid in my mind!

Yena is a relatable character; after “losing” Lucas, she was bumbling along with no direction in life, internally afraid of living for fear of facing loss…I want to hug her so badly whenever I hear how lonely she feels, especially when she comes from a divorced family where her parents never put her first. I cheered so much for her when she finally told her mum and dad how she truly felt and would set boundaries whenever they “used” her against each other. Lucas, gosh, you can’t help but love his character! Even though he has forgotten Yena, he still feels so connected to her and can’t help but care for her. His love for his grandfather is admirable!

This book also juggles the ethics of memory erasing, and the author presents it from multiple perspectives. It’s neither good nor bad, and it highlights how important memories are the consequences the people who remember have to the people who lose their memories…and the reason people choose to erase their memories rather than live with them…

This beautiful read touches on familial relationships, memory loss, mental diseases (Alzheimer's), grief and most of all, love, with some elements of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Past Lives thrown into it.

Thank you, NetGalley and HarperCollins, for the e-ARC.

Genre 📚: YA Contemporary, Sci-fi, Romance
Tropes 💁‍♀️: Friends to lovers, Amnesia (à la Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)
Rep ✔️: Korean-Canadian main characters
CW ⚠️: PTSD, Loved one with Alzheimer’s, brief discussions of grief and abuse
Rating ⭐️: 5/5

The idea of intentional amnesia has always scared me. It’s hard enough to hold on to memories, so why would we want to get rid of them on purpose? At the same time, knowing all the emotional pain the past can bring, I understand the appeal — which is what makes Meet Me at Blue Hour and its concept so compelling.

FMC Yena Bae is in Busan, South Korea to work at her mother’s groundbreaking memory erasure clinic. And there, she runs into MMC Lucas, the childhood best friend who disappeared from her life years ago. The real kicker? He doesn’t remember her. He’s had her entire existence erased, and she doesn’t know why. Of course, Lucas doesn’t know why either, so it’s hard for Yena to be completely upset with him. I’m glad that we got both of their POVs, so we could experience Lucas’s innocent confusion and Yena’s messy mix of emotions.

The erasure clinic uses recorded sounds linked to certain memories, and the hope is that they can use the same method for memory recovery. Author Sarah Suk included a few chapters in the POV of sounds linked to Yena and Lucas’s memories — a unique and endearing way to present flashbacks. The more I got to know these characters, the more I loved them, and I was desperate to find out what tore them apart. The mystery of it all, though somewhat predictable, was well-executed and unraveled into a satisfying ending.

It’s corny as hell but I’m gonna say it anyway… Not even a memory wipe could make me forget this book. It’s that good.