Forgotten by Cat Patrick

First published in 2011 by Hardie Grant Egmont

London Lane can remember the future but not the past. Her brain resets every night at 4.33am and each morning she is left to piece together her life from daily notes she leaves for herself and the gentle encouragement from her mother. Her best friend Jamie is the only other person who knows about her condition. London is doing the best she can and managing to live a fairly decent existence until two things happen: one, the very gorgeous Luke grin-dimples his ways into her life and two: she is haunted by a memory of the future that casts its shadow upon the present and London’s peace-of-mind.

Forgotten ticks all the boxes: it is cute, has a killer concept, the writing is fresh and there was a tonne of hype propelling it to ‘must-read’ lists everywhere. Things that normally bug me about this kind of book were thankfully absent (namely, really shoddily done teen romance). My face remained devoid of ‘oh god here we go again’ sniggers. But something about it just didn’t click for me. Maybe it is just because it was all a bit nice and lovely and inoffensive.

or maybe ...

Okay, I didn’t like how the book suddenly transformed into a kind of mystery whodunit in the last quarter. That felt uneven, and almost like a completely different book. And also – the epilogue. Oh my goodness. YA, please don’t. Avoid the epilogue wherever possible. This book lost half a star just from that epilogue – it wasn’t needed. It doesn’t add anything, and comes across all a bit ‘lesson learned, moral resolution, cutesy-wutesy bleh.’

Plot holes abound. Not even little ones that eat away at you, or inconsistencies, more just like a black hole of ‘ummmm?’  plot. In the back of my mind I was always going ‘but how can she’, ‘but what about’... I tried to give the cynic inside me a rest, because logic should never really get in the way of a good story, but then again I guess I really need to be swept away by the story to begin with.

London and Luke: they are cute, and I enjoyed the subtlety about their relationship, the naturalness of it and how it wasn’t, for the most part, written with over the top sentiment. But I really am sick of reading about how HOT the male love interest it. I GET it, maybe after the SECOND time it’s written. And why do they always have to be so hot anyway? Does that make the relationship more fulfilling?

Smooth prose and intriguing plot make Forgotten effortless reading. I didn’t really start to turn away from this book until the tacked on sub-plot at the end (or was it really the main plot?) There is a lot to like here and it certainly isn’t bad but I can’t say that I’ll be doing a London and remembering it into the future.