Forget It

Author: Cat Patrick

Forgotten Cover I make no secret of my love for YA fiction.  Especially as a palate cleanser between novels written for adults.  In that sense, Forgotten is perfect.  In other senses, not so much.

Meet London Lane.  She’s a high school junior just trying to make it through every day in one piece – just like every other high school junior.  She has a best friend and some acquaintances, lives with her single mother and can’t remember anything before the day she is currently living – not quite like every other high school junior.

London remembers in reverse.  She has no idea what happened yesterday – her mind resets at 4:33 am every single day.  She relies on notes to get her through school and keep her form wearing the same outfit every day.  What she does remember is the future.  She knows where to sit in math because she knows where she will sit tomorrow.  She knows what happens to her friend and a lot of her acquaintances, she knows all sorts of things that haven’t happened yet.  Nobody is aware of her peculiar condition other than her mother and Jamie, her friend.  When she meets a new boy at school she mostly dismisses him – she has no “memory” of him in the future so she figures he isn’t a part of her life.  But as she meets him anew every day and they begin a relationship (with her filling in each day from her notes) she becomes more and more troubled that he hasn’t shown up in her memories of her future.  Where is Luke?  Why can’t she see him?

There are quite a few mysteries swirling around London in Forgotten, not the least of which is what happened when she was 6 years old to make her stop being a regular little girl and turn her into an amnesiac clairvoyant.  But let’s face it; this is truly teen fiction, so most of the book is spent on London’s relationship with Luke.  Interesting to a degree, but surely not as interesting to me as to the teenagers who form the prime audience for the book.  This is one of those YA novels that doesn’t have the wide appeal as something more weighty like The Hunger Games.

But it does have it place, and that is firmly on the nightstand of middle and high school aged girls.  They will love the romance, the girl who can’t tell anyone how different she feels or explain why she doesn’t fit in.  The girl who is tormented by the cheerleaders and wishes for memories that she will never have.  It’s a classic tale of the ugly duckling/underdog/unpopular girl who has more to offer the world than the world can imagine.  Author Cat Patrick taps into teenage insecurities with her protagonist and keeps them hooked with her unusual premise.  The only way she might lose her audience is through basic confusion – London’s situation isn’t easy to understand and it isn’t thoroughly explained right away (or, let’s face it, ever – it’s ludicrous, but still interesting).  The pace is fast and the whole book took me about 3 hours to read.  On the whole, Forgotten isn’t likely to be a crossover sensation – it’s too filled with hormonal longing for most adults.  But for its intended audience, it will definitely get the job done.  Recommended for any and all teenage girls.  2 ½ stars out of 5 for adults, but 4 stars out of five for the intended teen audience.

– S. Millinocket

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Sue Millinocket
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