Forget You

Forget You
Jennifer Echols
MTVBooks, 2010

This is the second Jennifer Echols novel I've read, and I can definitely say I'm a fan. Just like she did with Love Story, Echols created characters who are real, who breathe - and curse - just like the students I encounter every day. She takes these characters and throws them into the middle of a story that's believable - in Forget You, it's a handful of dysfunctional families and the escape/coping that high schoolers turn to. I stayed up way too late reading this one, but that's okay!

Zoey excels at keeping it all together, at maintaining the appearance of perfection. Until the day she comes home to find her mother half-dead, her father exploding in the ER waiting room, and one very rash decision at a beach party. All that week, Zoey struggles to maintain the facade, but after a wreck on the way home from the post-football game beach party, she remembers nothing. Not the wreck, not the events leading up to it. She remembers nothing except her stand-off with Doug at the game. Doug - with his mysterious past and sarcasm, not to mention those beautiful sea-colored eyes. And Doug knows something about the wreck that broke his leg and stole Zoey's memory, but he's not telling.

This is a quick novel, it doesn't cover a long expanse of time. But it's intense. Zoey and Doug, have some heavy issues they're dealing with individually and together. At first, I really wanted to grab Zoey by the shoulders, shake her 'til her teeth rattled, and then curl up with some chocolate and tissues for a "big sister heart-to-heart" - her decisions and reactions made my heart ache a little, because I know so many of them really are happening. But she works through it, and she works through the junk, and she's surrounded by unexpected supporters - like Doug, who genuinely wants her to be "okay." I loved the characters in this, I feel like they're what made the story. And there was just enough tension, enough mystery, to keep me guessing. I had no clue where Echols was leading me, but I loved the journey. And the ending? Oh yeah. It's great.

Book provided by author for review.