Review of Meet Me At Blue Hour by Sarah Suk

*Meet Me At Blue Hour* by Sarah Suk (2025). Published by Quill Tree Books.

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

This blog post is interesting to me because lately, I’ve been struggling to get in my reading time. I was working for the longest time as a freelancer and contractor, but recently pivoted to an 8-5 job where I’m in an office. It’s not hybrid, so I’m always at home trying to put the puzzle pieces together of how I’ll get my reading done. I also continue working on this blog when I’m not at work, so the Instagram reels I’m fed about a 5-9 feel too real right now.

Anyways, I am trying to find that time to read here and there. Somehow I’m still on track for my Goodreads goal, even though I’ve been slowly giving up on the notion of reading goals in life. I think they can be a little too much pressure and takes the fun off of reading at the end of the day, and I want to read because I want to stay in touch with literature while also pursuing my side career as a writer.

I’ve been trying to pick up books that interest me in order to cultivate a better reading habit. I’m learning more and more as I get older that I don’t want to waste my time on things that don’t interest me, so if a book isn’t something I’m feeling fifty pages in, then I put it down and decide if I want to read it another time or not.

Meet Me At Blue Hour caught my attention because it was set in Busan. I do usually avoid young adult literature because the writing style often doesn’t fit what I look for. I often want to feel challenged with books, and honestly I haven’t felt that way with many young adult books. I used to live in Busan for a summer though, so the synopsis of this book caught my eye.

So I picked it up at my local library and read it over the course of two days. It was a fairly quick read for me, overall.

Let’s get into the review!

After heading to Busan for a summer, one young adult finds her old best friend there—but he wiped his memory of her.

This novel takes place in Busan, in an alternate universe where it’s possible to erase people’s memories. Our female lead, Yena, is spending her summer in Busan at her mom’s clinic. She’s famous for being able to erase memories, and she’s developing the technology to further this study and practice.

Yena is a typical teenager spending her summer abroad, especially when it comes to her own discontent. She feels like she’s unable to connect with the people around her and make real connections, and she often ponders the loss of her best friend Lucas.

One day he just kind of randomly disappeared and moved to another city in Canada, leaving a void in her life and feeling like she can’t truly connect with other people the way she did. Imagine her shock though when she bumps into Lucas on the streets of Busan and discovers that he wiped his memories of her.

He has no recollection of his life and time with Yena. We learn from the chapters in his perspective that he has come into town to hang out with his grandfather, who now has Alzheimer’s and will probably have his own slow descent memory-wise. It devastates Lucas to think that his father will not be able to remember his childhood and the people around him.

That makes Lucas determined to get his grandfather into a new pilot program at Yena’s mom’s clinic, even if it means that he would have to find some creative ways to get him into there. And Yena, who ran away when she saw Lucas again for the first time, is now on a crash course to seeing him on a daily basis.

This leads us to this question: will these two repair their relationship? The novel really explores the concept of memory and what we choose to forget, as we see how and why Lucas decided to wipe his memories of Yena and living in the city he was from.

Overall Thoughts

This is a novel built around a really interesting premise, especially considering our main characters are young adults. I think there are some ethical questions around allowing young people to wipe their memories, but Lucas is indeed eighteen at the start of the novel and technically a legal adult.

Unique premise aside, I found the writing in this novel to be standard fare. I find young adult novels to be very quick reads for me because of how accessible and plain the language can be compared to literary fiction. That’s not to put down this novel or YA in general—this book has rich, lush descriptions of Busan that took me right back there.

I say if this is a novel that interests you, then pick it up. It’s worth a shot if you want a solid read over the weekend, or something to bring along during a trip. I enjoyed reading it overall!

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