16 year old London Lane has a secret: every night since she was 6 years old, when she goes to sleep, her memory of her past disappears. Instead, she awakens with “memories” of her future life, remembering people, places, and events that have not yet occurred. London can’t remember the day before today, or any day of 16 years of life. Her mom and her best friend Jaime are the only people who know her secret and they use a system of nightly note reminders, cell phone alarms, and old-fashioned partnering to help London navigate her daily high-school life. It’s a somewhat maddening, precarious existence, but London has found comfort in knowing how things in her life will turn out.
That is until a gorgeous new guy shows up and starts flirting with her – Luke Henry is everything London could want in a boyfriend – but the problem is, she can’t “remember” him from her future life, so what hope do they have for a relationship? But Luke’s entrance into her life isn’t the only unsettling thing that’s happening, because now London is having a disturbing dream about a funeral, where her long-estranged father and other family members are gathered around her burying someone, but she can’t see who it is. Adding to her worries, she and Jamie are having a fight she foresaw, but it’s rougher going through it that she expected. So London starts to wonder if what she remembers is the only future possible, or if she can choose to make small changes in her present-day life, thus changing her future, and just maybe uncovering some of the mysteries of her past.
Cat Patrick’s debut, Forgotten, has an interesting premise and a slowly unraveling mystery that keeps you intrigued. It reminded me on numerous occasions of both 50 First Dates, the 2004 Drew Barrymore/Adam Sandler movie, and Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife. London’s “condition” seemed oddly sci-fi for me at first, but Patrick handles it well enough that soon I stopped questioning the likelihood of such a thing and just went along for the ride. The big take-away here is that your life isn’t already decided and you have the power to change your future, just by making small choices and being open to new possibilities. But even if all you come looking for is a romance laced with mystery and some sci-fi fantasy, and not a coming of age lesson, you won’t be leave London’s life disappointed.
- Posted by Cori
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