The Merge

Title: The Merge
Author: Grace Walker
Published: November 2025

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.

1. How did this book make you feel — and did that feeling change from the first half to the second? Where did you start emotionally, and where did you end up?

2. At its core, this is a mother–daughter story shaped by Alzheimer’s. How did Laurie’s memory loss affect your understanding of love, grief, and responsibility?

3. Amelia agrees to the Merge out of love but also fear. Did you empathise with her decision, or did it ever feel ethically troubling?

4. After reading this book, what do you believe makes a person them both in the context of the story but also more generally? Is it memory, personality, the body, relationships or something else?

5. Would you ever choose to merge with someone you love if it meant never having to say goodbye? Where is your personal line?

6. The book repeatedly questions whether consent can exist under pressure. Can a choice still be ethical when it’s shaped by illness, love, guilt, or social policy?

7. Which Merge pairing unsettled you the most and why? What did that pairing reveal about power, control, or sacrifice?

8. The Merge is presented as a solution to overpopulation and environmental collapse. Did this feel terrifyingly plausible or did it stretch your belief?

9. In The Merge, society applies pressure through taxes, stigma, and ‘moral responsibility’ rather than force. How is this reflected in today’s society and did it change your perspective?

10. The novel shifts from introspective sci-fi to dystopian thriller. Did this change in pace and tone strengthen or weaken the story for you?

11. How did you feel about the ending and its big revelation? Did it deepen the book’s message or undermine what made the story compelling?

12. What stayed with you most after finishing the book?