Welcome to my tour stop for Forget Me Not by Alyson Derrick, hosted by Colored Pages Tour. I enjoyed this YA Contemporary romance about a girl who forgets two years because of an accident. A lot happened in those two years and now she has to piece together how her life ended up as it did. A moving story with the tensions of a small town, this book gave me lots to think about. Check out the synopsis below.
Forget Me Not
By Alyson Derrick | Goodreads
Perfect for fans of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Five Feet Apart, this tender solo debut by the coauthor of New York Times bestseller She Gets the Girl is a romantic ode to the strength of love and the power of choosing each other, against odds and obstacles, again and again.
What would you do if you forgot the love of your life ever even existed?
Stevie and Nora had a love. A secret, epic, once-in-a-lifetime kind of love. They also had a plan: to leave their small, ultra-conservative town and families behind after graduation and move to California, where they could finally stop hiding that love.
But then Stevie has a terrible fall. And when she comes to, she can remember nothing of the last two years—not California, not coming to terms with her sexuality, not even Nora. Suddenly, Stevie finds herself in a life she doesn’t quite understand, one where she’s estranged from her parents, drifting away from her friends, lying about the hours she works, dating a boy she can’t remember crushing on, and headed towards a future that isn’t at all what her fifteen-year-old self would have envisioned.
And Nora finds herself…forgotten. Can the two beat the odds a second time and find their way back together when “together” itself is just a lost memory?
Content notes include domestic abuse, amnesia, homophobia, racial slurs.
Forget Me Not – Review
Forget Me Not is the story of a small-town girl, Stevie. She and her family live in the small town of Wyatt. Wyatt is a conservative town with Christian beliefs. Pregnancy before marriage and sexuality are frowned upon and parents are often shunned for what the community thinks the child has done wrong. Monster truck races, excessive drinking and partying are part of the teen culture.
Stevie is seventeen years old when an accident causes her amnesia and her last memories are from when she was fifteen years of age. A lot has happened in two years. She has realized who her friends truly are, she has learned more about herself and fallen in love. But all that is forgotten and the holes in her memory offer the people around her a second chance at a relationship with her and they are able to omit what they don’t want to tell her.
The characters in this book build a clear picture of the community and their beliefs. When she becomes able to socially mingle again, Stevie returns to her childhood friends who tell her that she had a romantic interest in the Asian boy who works at a diner they love to visit. Stevie, herself, is also portrayed as Asian, Korean to be exact. What starts off as a forced romance turns into a beautiful friendship. For the first time, Stevie is able to open up to someone who looks like her and has experienced the loneliness of being the odd one out. Stevie is not a perfect character – in her search for herself she takes advantage of Ryan. She is told that she likes him but she doesn’t have feelings for him, doesn’t remember having feelings for anyone and so he ends up as a guinea pig. But he is kind and understanding and this book would have been incomplete without him.
Stevie had an intimate relationship with Nora before the accident. They had planned on leaving town so that they could start over together, away from oppressive ideas. They wanted to be free to live as they pleased. I commended their courage in taking this step and was rooting for them the whole time. Forget Me Not is written in chapters from the point of view of Stevie and letters that Nora wrote to her during Stevie’s recovery period at the hospital and later, when she could not remember their love. The letters had depth to Nora and the pain Stevie’s amnesia causes her.
After the accident, Nora strikes up a friendship with Stevie, without telling her about their history. Stevie enjoys spending time with Nora and feels a spark between them that she should have been feeling with Ryan. As the story progresses, Stevie, Nora and Ryan become an important support system for each other.
Stevie’s amnesia leads her on a path of self-discovery. She is shocked by how much her friends have grown and how inconsiderate they are. They want her to be like them – young girls wanting to party and be with guys, enjoy monster truck races and beer. They don’t care about what she wants or who she is. They giggle at the side rather than standing up for her in situations where a true friend would have.
Stevie has grown up with strict ideas about who she is supposed to love. Finding out that she is queer is a shock to her. It takes her time to accept this reality. Since the accident, it looks like her relationship with her mother has improved a lot. She doesn’t want to lose that again. She wants to be honest. Stevie may not remember but Nora does. She knows what their parents would think about their relationship and the consequences of telling them.
Forget Me Not is about accepting the parts of ourselves we cannot give up while acknowledging and living with the harsh reality that some of our loved ones would rather disown us because of those parts. It beautifully depicts friendships and love as Stevie grapples with existential questions. I enjoyed reading this book and it gave me the chance to ask Clinton about his upbringing and his experiences of growing up in a small town.
I grew up in India and since moving to Canada, have interacted with people from around the world. This move really opened up my love for reading about different cultures. My experience so far has primarily been with books that are immersive in ethical and cultural values. I was surprised when Korean culture was not explored in this book. I wondered why and it was a hard journey to look into the various reasons why someone’s appearance may not automatically mean that they have/choose to share cultural knowledge, a fact I had not confronted before, a bias I did not know I had been carrying. I think about my future kids (who will indeed have prominent south asian features) – who knows what I will be able to teach them about my culture, when I am so far from being immersed in it. We will never know the millions of experiences that people can have. India itself has such diverse practices that we know that upbringing in one city can look quite different from another. Forget Me Not reminded me to be kind, to myself and others. The world is a complicated and imperfect place.
Have you read this book or plan to? Add it to your Goodreads shelf if you would like to read it!
Many thanks to Colored Pages Team and the publisher Simon Schuster Books for Young Readers for having me on this tour and for providing a complimentary review copy in exchange for an honest review. Follow the tour for Forget Me Not through the Colored Pages Team on Instagram and Twitter. Find the tour schedule here.
Author Information
Alyson Derrick was born and raised in Greenville, Pennsylvania, a town where burn barrels take the place of recycling bins. After making her great escape to Pittsburgh, where she earned her bachelor’s in English writing, Alyson started her own food truck but soon realized she much prefers telling stories over slinging cheesesteaks. She is the co-author of the New York Times bestseller She Gets the Girl and the author of Forget Me Not. Alyson currently resides in Pennsylvania with her wife and their dog, Hank. Connect with her on Goodreads, Instagram and Twitter.
Head to the author interview now to chat with Alyson! 🙂
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