What if two consciousnesses could be joined together into one person – two people in one head and body? If so, who would you choose to ‘merge’ with?
Once the process begins, there can be no going back, we will always be together…
Laurie is sixty-five and living with Alzheimer’s. Her daughter Amelia can’t bear to see her mother’s mind fade. Faced with the reality of losing her forever, Amelia signs them up to take part in the world’s first experimental merging process for Alzheimer’s patients, in which Laurie’s ailing mind will be transferred into Amelia’s healthy body and their consciousness will be blended as one.
Soon Amelia and Laurie join a group of other merge participants: teenage Lucas, who plans to merge with his terminally ill brother Noah; Ben, who will merge with his pregnant fiancée Annie; and Jay, whose merging partner is his unwilling addict daughter Lara.
As they prepare to move to The Village, a luxurious rehabilitation centre for those who have merged, they quickly begin to question whether everything is really as it seems.
Read this exclusive extract now, as chosen by library staff across the UK for the BBC Radio 2 Book Club.
