Review: Forgotten

Forgotten, by Cat Patrick. The summary (from GoodReads):

Each night when 16 year-old London Lane goes to sleep, her whole world disappears. In the morning, all that's left is a note telling her about a day she can't remember. The whole scenario doesn't exactly make high school or dating that hot guy whose name she can't seem to recall any easier. But when London starts experiencing disturbing visions she can't make sense of, she realizes it's time to learn a little more about the past she keeps forgetting--before it destroys her future.

The premise for this book was fascinating, actually. Someone who can remember the future but not the past? Awesome. But it took me pretty much the entire book to figure out how London’s memory works. I was so confused for at least the first half of the book, because there’s not a part where London helpfully explains how her memory works and why it’s that way. And I’m still not sure I completely understand it--like, she doesn’t remember events from the past, but she does remember skills like how to do math or whatever. And she remembers most people in her life, but only because she recognizes them from the future. And she won’t remember the future memories from yesterday, unless she remembers them again. Or something like that. Seriously I was SO confused. I still am, kinda. No wonder London writes EVERYTHING down.

This book has a romance, but since London and Luke are together from almost the beginning of the book, there’s pretty much zero romantic tension. But I did think it was fascinating how because of a whole thing involving London not being able to remember Luke from the future, each day she wakes up essentially meeting her boyfriend for the first time. How weird would that be? But apparently between her notes and the fact that Luke’s a total hottie, London doesn’t mind the fact that she keeps forgetting him.

The only major issue I had with the book was that there wasn’t really an overall driving plotline to give the book tension and direction. It was mostly London working out stuff about her memories. I guess there were two plot lines--one involving a family mystery and one involving a friend in trouble--that kinda acted to give the book a sense of purpose, but I didn’t think either one was well-enough developed to give the book the definitive direction it needed.

But overall, I did end up enjoying the book. I was kinda confused for most of it, and the lack of a driving plotline made it seem to drag on at parts, but the concept was interesting enough to keep me reading. I don’t know if there’s going to be a sequel, but I probably wouldn’t pick it up if there was. However, I would pick up another book by this author, because she’s definitely creative and I liked the writing style.