Senior Collector Emma Thorne is the state’s most precise weapon. Her job is simple: extract dangerous feelings from citizens before they spread. For six years, she has served the Council without question, until one mission changes everything. A four-year-old child’s pure love breaks through Emma’s defenses, flooding her with the very emotions she was trained to erase.
When her next assignment fails on a mysterious stranger immune to her power, Emma’s world shatters. Everything she’s been taught — that emotions are poison, that peace requires suppression — is a lie. The truth is far worse: emotions are living energy, vital to planetary health, and the Council’s “peace” is slowly killing the world.
As Emma digs deeper, she makes a devastating discovery: the architect of Project Terminus — the plan to permanently sever human emotion — is her own mother. With hours left before the plan is activated, Emma must choose between loyalty to the woman who raised her and the survival of every living thing.
The Emotion Collector: Awakening is a gripping, high-stakes dystopian thriller for readers who devoured Delirium and The Giver, but crave the moral complexity, science, and hope of Nexus. It explores themes of power, autonomy, family, and redemption — proving that love is not a weakness but the most revolutionary force in existence.
To save humanity, Emma must sacrifice everything she is to restore the world’s heart.
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VD Keck –
Y’all! This is a knockout. In a world where feelings are outlawed, Emma Thorne is the Council’s deadliest weapon—until one stolen tear awakens love, grief, and rage she can’t unfeel. Suddenly, the sterile hum of New Geneva is shattered with raw, electric humanity.
Emma is fierce yet fragile, Evan is the spark that ignites her rebellion, and the Council is chilling in its antiseptic perfection. French’s writing is cinematic—you hear the neural hum, taste molten emotion, and feel every pulse of danger.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ — Bold, addictive, and emotionally charged. This isn’t just a dystopian thriller—it’s a sensory experience that makes you grateful for every messy, beautiful feeling.
Sherry Fundin –
In The Emotional Collector: Awakening by Richard French, we meet Senior Collector Emma Thorne. Emma is the state’s most powerful weapon…until she opens herself up to a four year old’s feelings of love. She has been conditioned to collect feelings, which are considered waste, not to empathize or sympathize. Now she was beginning to question her purpose.
Evan Cross is part of the resistance. These are the kind of characters I find most interesting. They come across as real, fighting against suppression, wearing a white hat. He is immune to the dampening technology. And, of course, anyone that knows me, knows I love a good villain and I was surprised that it was Emma’s mother that surprised me the most.
The state had been updating the dampening technology, increasing the efficiency, causing the planet to die at a faster rate. Emma begins to think that her real purpose was not to destroy the planet, but to save it.
The Emotional Collector made me think of Avatar, how everything was connected. By killing emotions, they were killing the planet.
The state wants to study Emma, and we know what that means…nothing good for her. And…it’s her mother leading the way. She can save the people and the planet, but at what cost to her? Is the Awakening a good thing, or will it doom the planet and everyone on it? Doesn’t really matter because the state had begun Project Terminus and it would permanently cut out human feeling within hours, killing the plane anyway.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from The Emotion Collector, but I loved it. The more characters I met, the more characters there were to love and others to try to understand their motivations. It’s one of those things, just because you can do something, should you?
I love this thought provoking novel. Once I started, I didn’t want to stop. I love novels that surprise me, and I was surprised at the twists and turns that Richard French threw my way.