Books I've Read: Forget me Not

This was a sweet book.  I picked it up because of the Eternal Sunshine reference in the description.

Stevie and Nora are madly in love.  That kind of do or die love that only seems to happen when you're a teeneager.  They live in a small town where they don't feel like they can live their love out loud.  So as soon as graduation is behind them, they're planning to blow town and start their real lives in California.

But then Stevie has a fall and wakes up with no memory of the past two years.  She doesn't even know who Nora is, other than the girl who found her and got her to the hospital. 

Stuck in a world where she's living in memories of herself at fifteen, Stevie struggles to figure out who she'd become as she discovers she'd abandoned her long-time friends, become estranged from her parents and has a crush on the boy working at the diner.  None of this feels right to her, and the only person she's able to find comfort with is Nora, a stranger.

As Stevie struggles to reconcile her past and future selves, Nora has to face a world in which her true love has forgotten her and may never remember their love.  But as the pair spend more time together, the same spark ignites between them.  Will their love follow the same path this time?

I enjoyed this book because I'm fascinated by memory and its subjective nature and fragility. The idea of losing two years of life is terrifying, but also so intriguing.  Imagine being two years older, but having no idea what happened in those two years?

I enjoyed this, especially the way the two girls managed to reconnect, as if fate or some external force meant for them to be together.  And how differently they handled the relationship the second time around. 

So, I'd recommend this one.  It's not life changing, but it is certainly intriguing.

But don't just listen to me.  here's the blurb: 

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 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?