2023 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature Longlist
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 “punch to the gut in the best way” (Booklist, starred review) about 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, 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?
Johanna
2023-07-16
Very cute, exciting and emotionally satisfying at least at the start. It felt relatable as a queer teenage coming-of-age story. The little details like the carabiner were a delightful nod to lesbian culture, too. It kind of lost me at the end, however. There were a few important themes that were just dropped, like Nora’s confrontation with her mom, which felt like it was used mainly to move the plot along and wasn’t explored in any detail. The ending was frustrating. It’s relatable but not satisfying, and left me feeling angry at how queer kids are so often plagued by guilt even if their parents “accept” them. The overwhelming sense of gratitude and relief that kids feel toward parents doing the bare minimum is heartbreaking and sad. Many queers live with constant guilt and a feeling that they can’t ask anything of their parents or be angry at them because “at least they didn’t kick me out”. In the romance genre, the expectation is emotional satisfaction to some degree and Forget Me Not didn’t deliver in that regard. I’d definitely say it’s worth a read though — especially the first chapter, it’s great.
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