The Binding is a Story that will leave you Spellbound, Enthralled and a little bit in Love . . .

“We take memories and bind them. Whatever people can’t bear to remember. Whatever they can’t live with. We take those memories and put them where they can’t do any more harm. That’s all books are.” 

I will level with you all, I wasn’t totally sold on this novel when it first floated into the literary universe on a wave of rapturous tidings. Strangely, I tend to shy away from the titles that are glorified, I feel like the hype forces me into an un-warranted bias before I’ve even read the blurb. However, after months of walking past it in bookshops, giving it the eye, flirting with the cover, picking it up, replacing it – I finally gave in. And boy, was it worth it. The love I have for this book knows no bounds. I love it so much I now have it in three formats: hardback, paperback and audiobook.

The Binding is a historical romance/fantasy and Collins’ first for the adult market. The story begins soberly, with its teenage protagonist being sent away from his family to become an apprentice in the art of book binding. Emmett Farmer has recently recovered from a mysterious illness which has left him weak and confused. He is under the assumption that he has done something un-remembered, which has thrown him into disgrace amongst his family.

He arrives at Seredith’s, the Bookbinder to whom he is to be apprentice. Although he indeed learns the art of binding books, this is not binding as we know it. Seredith and Emmett bind people’s memories; or rather remove from the person that which they’d rather forget. These secrets are then stored within the pages of the tomes and kept in the Bindery, eager to be neglected.

Emmett becomes obsessed with the mysteries hiding within the bindings and believes that his name may grace the cover of a memory, that he himself may have been forced to abandon. His disgrace omitted from his consciousness, but not from the pages of the book which eludes him. The story then follows him on the quest to find what has been lost to him and the reasons behind why.

Collins is masterful in the way she weaves not just the story, but the intricacy of the landscapes and characters. The setting is most definitely England, but set in an alternate past that is never specified.

The second half of the book is beautifully told, with plot twists and turns worthy of any Hollywood film script. I was shocked, dazzled, enthralled . . . spellbound. We come to learn that bindings usually take place by the hand of another, forcing the ‘bind-ee’ into giving up the memories that would bathe the perpetrator in disgrace and arrest. Sin is forced into silence, a parable of how the rich and powerful can mute those who they see as ‘lesser’. There is a lesson in this for all of us.

Without giving too much away, because honestly, I want EVERYONE to read this book: this is a love-story. Emmett’s is a forbidden love, a sinful one. It has been a long time since a book has caused such a stir in my very loins, such a hunger to read on. The way Collins pens this part of the story is some of the best writing I have ever seen, it’s beautiful and tangible and heart-breakingly intense.

She writes first love as though she is experiencing it, drowning in it; it’s deliciously and addictively wonderful.

In a world that has recently been shrouded in pain, in-equality, fear and loss of freedom maybe it is time to recall the simple things, like the first blossoms of new love. I implore you to read this book and prepare for it to enchant you in ways you never thought possible.

The Binding may be a book about forgetting, but it is a story forever etched into my heart and one I will remember, and love, for a long time to come.

Katie D x