Emmett and Lucian’s emotional journeys are incredibly poignant. As an audience, we only know what Emmett knows, which makes for a fascinating read once more of the story is revealed.Ĭollins’ characters are just as well crafted. She brings the world to life through small details about Emmett’s life during his days book binding, however there is only a vague description about the larger world and its history. This continues throughout the first part of the book, but it’s done masterfully.Ĭollins’ writing is engaging, dynamic, and leaves enough hints to keep her audience on edge. When Seredith takes Emmett in, she doesn’t lessen any of his or the audience’s confusion as to why he’s there. He is forbidden to enter the locked room where books are stored, so he spends many months marbling end pages, tooling leather book covers, and gilding edges.īut his curiosity is piqued by the people who come and go from the inner sanctum, and the arrival of the lordly Lucian Darnay, with whom he senses a connection, changes everything. Leaving behind home and family, Emmett slowly regains his health while learning the binding trade.

Once their stories have been told and are bound between the pages of a book, the slate is wiped clean and their memories lose the power to hurt or haunt them.Īfter having suffered some sort of mental collapse and no longer able to keep up with his farm chores, Emmett Farmer is sent to the workshop of one such binder to live and work as her apprentice. It’s a world in which people visit book binders to rid themselves of painful or treacherous memories. The Binding by Bridget Collins made me laugh, cry and everything in between with its strong story and absolutely breathtaking romance.īooks are dangerous things in Collins’s alternate universe, a place vaguely reminiscent of 19th-century England.

The binding bridget