The Merge: WINNER OF THE NEW ADULT BOOK PRIZE 2026

'[A] clever and provocative debut...smart and engaging – like Nineteen Eighty-Four crossed with Never Let Me Go.' Daily Mail

'A compelling and disturbing story of love and sacrifice, control and resistance.'Guardian

'Pacy, clever and genuinely frightening.' Josh Silver

'An excellent novel, an expert balancing act between emotive and speculative elements.' Nicola Dinan

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.