“The truth is I hate keep secrets. I always have. All they really do is tear people apart,” (Derrick 1).
Eighteen-year-old Stevie and Nora have a deep, true, heart-stopping kind of love, and they also have a plan. In just a few weeks they’re going to leave their ultra-conservative town and their parents and move to California where they can be out and in love without any fear. But all of that changes after Stevie has a terrible fall and loses two years of her life, including memories of Nora and coming to terms with her sexuality. Stevie doesn’t understand why her parents are so distant, why her friends seem strange, or dating a boy she doesn’t remember having a crush on. Will Nora and Stevie find themselves back to each other and start their epic love again?
Forget Me Not was such a good read! I thought it was a really interesting writing choice of Derrick’s to start the book before Stevie lost her memories instead of starting the book without them. This way readers were able to experience Stevie and Nora’s relationship as well as the loss of it when Stevie lost her memories. Derrick allowed us to see Stevie’s life before and after, to hope that Nora and Stevie can reunite and have their relationship blossom again as well as feel frustrated by the way Stevie is treated by her friends and family.
It’s a beautifully written book that is very simply about love and surviving. Stevie and Nora live in an incredibly conservative town and both realize that while they love each other they could never be out in their town, not when Stevie is already prone to racist comments for being half-Asian. It’s a story about persevering for love, working through adversity together, and finding someone who is worth changing your entire life for.
And sure, the ending was a bit unrealistic, but you know what? More queer fiction needs happy endings. There needs to be hope that parents will realize that they’ve been bigoted, that they’ve been sucked into Fox News. Fiction offers a safe space to explore, and maybe a parent of a queer kid will read this one and realize that their love for their child is more important than their internal bias. It’s a happy thought, anyways.
Forget Me Not is a fantastic read and I can’t wait to see what more Derrick adds to the YA queer canon!
Publication: April 4 2023
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Pages: 320 pages (Hardcover)
Source: Library
Genre: Fiction, Contemporary, Queer
My Rating: ⛤⛤⛤⛤
Summary:
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?
Sarah O'Connor 