It tells the story of London, a girl who suffers from short term memory loss. Every morning at 4.33am, her memory resets and wipes everything clean. The only way she knows who her friends are, where she sits in school and where her house is is by accessing her future memories. Yes, London can see into the future, the way the rest of us access memories from our past.
Firstly, I have to say that I really liked the author’s style of writing. This is a bit of a lame point to start on, but I thought it flowed very easily and had a lightness of touch that made me want to keep on reading. I finished Forgotten in less than a day, and while I was reading it I really enjoyed it. The little snippets of the future were quite interesting and funny and I liked London’s narrative and thought she was an interesting protagonist (albeit a bit judgey sometimes) and I liked all the little coping strategies she had in place to deal with her condition.
I also liked Luke. He seemed very sweet and a stable influence for London, and although their relationship was instalovey to the extreme (she has to fall in love with him Every. Single. Day.) and their attraction seemed to be based a bit too much on looks instead of personality, they made a very cute couple.
The plot of the book is okay, but really only okay. It was a really interesting concept, but I just don’t think it was fully explored. A bit more delving and some more tension would have made the plot of this book explosive, and coupled with the author’s writing style could have probably catapulted it into my top ten of the year. As it was, I just felt it fell a little flat. Not bad, but definitely not up to its full potential.
In a way, I would rather London’s affliction had just been short term memory loss. That way the author could have focussed much more on how London’s life had been affected and not so much on the minutae of high school life. Making the book into a contemporary novel would have made the romantic element work a lot better. Kind of like a YA 50 First Dates.
As it was, I thought the romance swamped the storyline a bit. The future memory thing didn’t really work so well for me; I don’t think it was explored to its fullest and because the book is being sold to us as a paranormal story, I expected it to be edgier somehow. Like l kept expecting the government to pop up and whisk London away to a secure facility and Luke would have to break her out and they’d go on the run ...
Or whatever. It’s not up to me to re-write this book. I’m just reporting how I saw it. Ultimately this was a cute, light read to fill the time, but probably needed a bit more tension to really hook the reader in.
3 stars