Author: Kate Karyus Quinn
Genre: Young Adult, Paranormal Fantasy
Release Date: 10 June, 2014
Source: HarperTeen via Edelweiss
Goodreads | The Reading Room
Welcome to Gardnerville.Review by Nara
A place where no one gets sick. And no one ever dies.
Except...
There’s a price to pay for paradise. Every fourth year, the strange power that fuels the town exacts its payment by infecting teens with deadly urges. In a normal year in Gardnerville, teens might stop talking to their best friends. In a fourth year, they’d kill them.
Four years ago, Skylar’s sister, Piper, was locked away after leading sixteen of her classmates to a watery grave. Since then, Skylar has lived in a numb haze, struggling to forget her past and dull the pain of losing her sister. But the secrets and memories Piper left behind keep taunting Skylar—whispering that the only way to get her sister back is to stop Gardnerville’s murderous cycle once and for all.
Well, that was disturbing. In a good way, of course.
(Don't You) Forget About Me is, bluntly put, quite bizarre. Told in alternating first and second point of view, with first person being present time and second person being flashbacks addressed the our narrator's sister, this book is both strangely compelling and ridiculously confusing. At least, at first. In the first couple of chapters, you're literally dumped into this random world where you sit there thinking "wtf is going on?!" As we move through the narrative, though, we get glimpses of secrets and hints, all leading to the answer of this over-branching question: what is happening in this strange, strange town?
Gardnerville sounds like "paradise": a place where people can go to cure terminal diseases, where no one gets sick and people live longer lives than they ever would on the outside. But every fourth year, all the teens go berserk- leading to violent magic, murder and complete disaster. The perpetrators of these crimes are taken and locked up in a re-education facility: The Reformatory. And that's the place where Skylar's sister, Piper, is trapped.
While there are many lines of tension initially running through the narrative, it's not until quite near the end that the overt creepiness begins to emerge. The, frankly, effed up creepiness. Just, what even. And as the creepiness ramps up, the confusion fades- making for a rather satisfying read.
A paranormal fantasy, possibly dipping into the realm of magical realism: (Don't You) Forget About Me is a creepy and unique read that any fans of mysteries should definitely read.
Liked it
Ratings
Overall: 7/10
Plot: 3/5
Writing: 4/5
World Building: 2.5/5
Characters: 3/5
Cover: 5/5
