Blurb
Remember Me is an astonishingly bold young adult novel from Estelle Laure, the critically acclaimed author of This Raging Light and Mayhem
If you could erase all of your painful memories, would you?
Blue Owens wakes up one day with the strangest feeling that something is very wrong. Everyone’s acting weird and she’s found a note in her closet telling her to get on the Little Blue Bus at 7:45, which she does, meeting up with the exact person she was supposed to avoid: Adam Mendoza. Even though she has no idea who he is, something about him is so familiar.
When she confronts him, the truth is revealed—Blue has paid to have her memories removed, and Adam is one of those memories. As Blue struggles to piece together her history, she is torn between her desire to know why she would do something so drastic and her fear of what she will find.
Remember Me is the bold and beautiful story of a girl who must find the courage to face the demons of her past and reclaim her loved ones—even if it ruins her.
Review
I love twisty mind-bendy books about memory, so I was excited when this one came to my attention. The story starts when Blue Owens wakes up one day but feels that everything is off — something is not quite right. On top of that, her friends are acting weird, whispering behind her back, trying to force her to bring orange juice, and giving her strange looks. This part of the story filled me with a pervasive, discomfiting sense of unease: the kind that raises gooseflesh on your arms. She then finds a note under her jewelry box telling her to get on the Little Blue Bus at 7:45, so she does — and ends up meeting a boy named Adam Mendoza. But, as we soon learn, Blue has undergone a procedure to have her most painful memories erased, and that includes all memories of Adam. What follows is Blue trying to figure out why she willingly removed her memories, even though she may have to uncover some painfully devastating truths in the process.
I really loved the conversation in this book about pain and grief and the extent that someone may go to in order to lessen/erase that pain. It’s also a clever examination of the role of pain in our lives. This book took me to some fascinating places and was not only poignant and heart-wrenching but also eye-opening and thought-provoking. I loved journeying along with Blue as she unraveled the missing parts of her life and eventually discovered the reason she took such a drastic measure. Though raw in places, it was ultimately a hopeful story about trauma, love, grief, and healing. This is a book all about feeling: feeling pain, feeling love, feeling friendship, and allowing yourself to feel sadness because it deserves to be felt.
I found the plot of this emotive story utterly compelling and the characters realistic, relatable and well-drawn. The author did an excelling job with the relationships in the story, and I was delighted that they included a non-binary secondary character.
Additionally, I think many will find the plot relatable because how many of us haven’t wished that we could erase an especially painful memory at one time or another? That being said, the book is definitely sad and messy in places but ultimately ends on a positive and compassionate note, with love at its core. I tend to enjoy reflective writing — writing that examines humanity and character-driven stories that explore the many sides of human complexities & relationships, and that is what we get with this novel. All in all, Remember Me is an ambitious novel with a huge heart.
This title will release on March 22, 2022 but it is available now for preorder.
A huge thank you to Netgalley for providing a review copy of this book.
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