Author:Estelle Laure

Publisher: Wednesday Books

ISBN: 9781250261939

A teen in the near future wakes up to discover that her life seems off kilter. As she tries to retrace her steps to the moment everything changed, she finds herself confronting hard truths. Author Estelle Laure’s latest YA novel features a plot that’s slightly out of breath but contains writing that sparkles in Remember Me.

It’s 2031 and the day before Blue Owens’s birthday. She should feel excited; she should be looking forward to celebrating with her best friends, Turtle and Jack. But Blue wakes up with the weirdest sensation that something is not right.

Her body is giving her weird messages, for one thing. Then she finds an unsigned note and a photo in her closet. The note tells her to meet someone on a little blue bus the next morning. What blue bus? As long as Blue has lived in Owl Nook, New Mexico—and that’s pretty much her whole life—she’s never seen a blue bus in their small town.

She could just ignore the note, write it off as a prank, except it doesn’t seem like the kind of prank anyone she knows would pull. She only has Turtle and Jack; no other friends. She lives with her grandmother who she calls Gran. Her mom is dead; her dad lives in Florida. Who would do something like this? And why doesn’t she recognize anyone but herself in the photo with the note?

Against her better judgment, Blue makes her way to the bus the next day and meets Adam Mendoza. Her eyes tell her she’s never met Adam before; her heart tells her they were once something important. Eventually she gets Adam to tell her what happened. The two of them used to date, but after an Incident—with a capital I—Blue decided to undergo a procedure to have Adam removed from her memories.

She should be content with the answer, but she’s not. Clearly she and Adam meant something to one another at some point. They have a history, and Blue senses, even if she can’t remember, that they were happy for the most part. So why would she go through with this drastic step?

She finds her way back to the clinic where it all started and demands to get her memories back. There she fights for what she believes is rightfully hers: access to the pain of her life. The adults in charge warn her that she won’t like what she finds out, but Blue doesn’t care. She wants to know what she’s lost and reclaim it.

Author Estelle Laure jumps right into the action, starting the book on the day before Blue’s birthday when she discovers the note. While writers are often advised to start their stories with an inciting incident, readers might get the sense that they’ve missed something important with the opening chapters of the book. They meet Blue when she’s trying to make sense of the note, the photo, and why her backpack contains several bottles of orange juice. The plot doesn’t give readers much to know who Blue is and what she’s about, giving an abrupt introduction to the main character.

The book feels like it’s hurtling toward Blue’s birthday, getting her through her first meeting with Adam and back to the clinic in a hurry. Once she demands to get her memories back, the pace slows down. Laure takes her time to offer readers Blue’s history and the events leading up to her decision to have her memories removed. Some readers might feel like they’re being rushed to this point to get to the “main event.” They may not get enough time with Blue before her birthday in order to fully sympathize with her after she discovers what she’s lost.

Lines skip ahead in the story, assuming readers will catch up, which might disorient them a little bit. Also, Blue’s mentions early in the book about wanting love feel forced. The meeting with Adam at times seems a little manufactured rather than an organic progression of the story.

Nevertheless, Laure’s descriptions are bright and innovative, and the book’s plot falls squarely within the genre for her target market. YA readers sensitive to discussions about sex and sexuality might not want to pick this one up. I recommend readers Borrow Remember Me.