Book Review
Title: Forget This Ever Happened
Author: Cassandra Rose Clarke
Genre: Sci-Fi/Paranormal/LGBTQ+/Romance
Rating: ****
Synopsis: Sometimes there’s a town called Indianola.
And sometimes there isn’t.
Summer, 1993. Claire has been dumped in rural Indianola, Texas, to spend her whole vacation taking care of mean, sickly Grammy. There’s nothing too remarkable about Indianola: it’s run-down, shabby, and stifling hot, a pin-dot on the Gulf Coast.
Well, there is one remarkable thing, she discovers. Something otherworldly.
But if you leave Indianola, you forget about it… and if you stay, you have to live with it every day.
Because there’s a confluence of energies at Indianola, a fissure in time and space, a gap in reality. Nothing is as it seems. And unless Claire can figure out this town–the talkative lizards under the pecan trees; the honey-sweet but terrifying girl next door; the cute daughter of a powerful family, who would answer Claire’s questions if she had any answers; the pervasive sense of history coming unspooled, like a video tape–she might never leave.
Featuring a mindbending plot, heartfelt queer romance, brilliant writing, and intricate worldbuilding, Forget This Ever Happened is a lush and thrilling genre-bender perfect for the Black Mirror generation.
Review: Honestly, I didn’t know what to tag this book as because the synopsis sounded so strange to me at first. We are introduced to our protagonist, Claire as she is moving to Indianola to spend the summer with her grandmother. Claire isn’t happy about staying with her ailing grandmother and we feel her frustration as if it were our own, but things quickly become interesting as Claire discovers that monsters show up in the town and this is a normal and regular occurrence for the residents. However, there is a catch as they lose their memories of these months once they leave the town, which really peaked my interest as this screamed more aliens than it did monsters so I wanted to know more about these creatures and how they influenced the residents of the town.
Claire ends up quickly becoming friends with Julie, who family runs a lot of the businesses in Indianola and together they decide to investigate the strange things going on in their town. We are also introduced to Audrey; your typical cheerleader and Claire’s grandmother is set on them becoming friends, but Audrey gives off some seriously strange vibes that Claire wants nothing to do with. Quickly Julie and Claire’s friendship becomes a relationship and normally things happening this quickly would put me off but Claire and Julie’s romance seemed completely genuine and there are plenty of scene scattered throughout the novel that just show them hanging out and just being together which made their progression, although quick, seem completely believable within the context of the novel. I have to say I loved the anime references in this novel and the fangirl moments that Julie and Claire share since I had those exact moments as well when I was first getting into anime and still do today. I have to say that Julie and Claire complimented each other really well and they made not only a great couple but a great investigating duo as well.
I will say that I enjoyed Julie’s perspective far more than Claire’s purely because Julie seemed so much more confident, not just in herself but in her sexuality as well which meant there was no questioning issues when she found herself falling in love with Claire which was a breath of fresh air for me, personally, and you don’t see it that often in sapphic romance stories. Julie also seems to have a strength that Claire doesn’t as she is strong-willed, determined and fed up with the adults in the town refusing to do anything about the monsters residing there which made her a truly engaging character to follow throughout the novel. The way the monsters are viewed in this novel was also extremely interesting as there are seen as a completely mundane occurrence and their presence and the effects, they have on the residents are largely ignored. Even Julie who is used to them sees them as something completely normal, if strange which is contrasted by Claire who isn’t used to them and therefore finds them exact parts frightening and fascinating.
Despite all the things I loved about Forget This Ever Happened, there were a couple of aspects of the novel I wasn’t completely on board with. The first was the sheer level of dramatic irony, yes in some novels a small amount of irony is amusing and in satire novel then it is there because it is meant to be there but the amount of irony in this novel was often jarring at times, like it didn’t really need to be there. There were also a lot of unanswered questions by the time the novel concludes and unless there is a sequel to come, I will continue scratching my head about certain things for the foreseeable future. The final thing I wasn’t keen on was the mix of genres, I know some novel have a lot of crossover with other genres but they also seem to have at least 1 dominant genre that they belong to, this book didn’t. It was YA, sci-fi, fantasy, speculative fiction, just a bit of everything really and I think I would have been able to give this book 5 stars if it had one dominant genre that was explored a little more, for example, the sci-fi elements of this novel were great and it would have been amazing if there were more of them. Overall, Forget This Ever Happened was a solid, good book, it wasn’t the best book I’ve read this year but it implants itself solidly in the good-great category.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
I received this copy for review consideration from TBR and Beyond Tours.
Book Info:
Forget This Ever Happened by Cassandra Rose Clarke
Genre: Young Adult Sci-Fi Mystery
Publishing Date: October 6, 2020
Book Links:
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48541124-forget-this-ever-happened
Amazon: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0823446085?linkCode=gs2&tag=tesa0f-20
Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/forget-this-ever-happened-cassandra-rose-clarke/1135275356
Book Depository: https://www.bookdepository.com/Forget-This-Ever-Happened-Cassandra-Rose-Clarke/9780823446087
About the Author:
Cassandra Rose Clarke’s work has placed in the Rhysling Awards and been nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award, the Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Award, the Pushcart Prize, and YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults. She grew up in south Texas and currently lives in Houston, where she writes and serves as the associate director for Writespace, a literary arts nonprofit. She holds an M.A. in creative writing from The University of Texas at Austin, and in 2010 she attended the Clarion West Writer’s Workshop in Seattle. Her latest novel is Halo: Battle Born, out now from Scholastic.
Author Links:
Website: http://www.cassandraroseclarke.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/seeorsea
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cassandraroseclarke/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5331983.Cassandra_Rose_Clarke
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorcassandraroseclarke
Tumblr: https://cassandraroseclarke.tumblr.com/
Tour Schedule:
Giveaway (US Only):
Finished copy of Forget This Ever Happened. The giveaway ends on October 12th : http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/fc15a59510/
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