A mind changing event, simultaneously across the globe everyone experiences excruciating pain that lasts a matter of seconds and then instant relief, as if your mind has completely reset. Then the memories slowly flood in, but these memories don't belong to you. You have another person’s memories as if you lived them yourself. You can feel what they felt, remember smells, and even how to speak different languages. A rich playboy learns what it is like to be a Indian slave boy, a man in Chicago suddenly has recollections of murder in the Aryan Brotherhood, a third grader can speak fluent Korean, an ad exec in New York experiences life as a blind railroad worker in China. Phones begin to ring as people's Others begin calling, because they know everything about them. They know phone numbers, family member names, bank accounts, personal details, everything about their lives and they know their other knows just as much about them. There is nothing hidden, nothing left behind. And no one has an answer as to why this happened.
How weird would it be to trade memories with someone? Learn every single possible memory in someone's head. There were numerous characters introduced in this book and a lot of them overwhelmed me a bit. It was overwhelming with everything that was going on and the POV switches so suddenly (each chapter was one to three pages long and rotated between the characters). Then in the end even more characters were introduced that we had never heard from before. I felt at times the book was overly condensed and skimmed over each person’s life. I wanted so much more! It really had me wondering if this could actually happen. Overall it was a good read.
