Early Review: (Don't You) Forget About Me by Kate Karyus Quinn

(Don't You) Forget About Me by Kate Karyus Quinn

Welcome to Gardnerville.

A place where no one gets sick. And no one ever dies.
Except...
There’s a price to pay for paradise. Every fourth year, the strange power that fuels the town exacts its payment by infecting teens with deadly urges. In a normal year in Gardnerville, teens might stop talking to their best friends. In a fourth year, they’d kill them.

Four years ago, Skylar’s sister, Piper, was locked away after leading sixteen of her classmates to a watery grave. Since then, Skylar has lived in a numb haze, struggling to forget her past and dull the pain of losing her sister. But the secrets and memories Piper left behind keep taunting Skylar—whispering that the only way to get her sister back is to stop Gardnerville’s murderous cycle once and for all.

I'm honestly not sure how to explain how I feel about this book. On one hand it was really, well odd, hard to follow at first, and honestly way out there. But then on the other hand I was sucked in turning the pages as fast as I could read them even though all the while I kept thinking to myself what the.. But that was some of the charm of the book as nothing was as it seems.  Sure, the multiple time threads kept throwing me as I tried to unravel the secrets, and while I came to appreciate the way it all unfurled by the end it was just a bit frustrating while reading it due to my confusion. Also there was one element that was so off the wall that honestly I just had to convince myself to overlook the absurdity. Let me just say that rodents should not have played the role they did, and leave it at that. That being said, there were other twists that really made the read step up a major notch by the end as it made you look back over everything that had happened prior to that point with a new eye, amping up the intrigue in my book.

It's funny, not only did the plot line start out one way as far as enjoyment and wind up in a completely different category for me by the end, the main character also followed this pattern for me. At first I was rather annoyed with Skylar's pill popping and lack of care. She was an utter and complete mess, and not really relatable. But again as the story unfurled and you got to see more of her past and she also started stepping up in the future, I saw her in a new eye. Don't get me wrong, she was still incredibly broken and rather a mess, but as I started to see why she was that way, and as she started to work towards turning herself around, I fell for her, and only that much further into the story.

(DON'T YOU) FORGET ABOUT ME may require a bit of patience to get used to the way it jumps time frames and the overall strangeness, but it's a very fast paced read whose build up is more than worth it. It's definitely more than a little unique and a breath of fresh air for such a voracious but sometimes bored reader such as myself. Give it a shot, you'll be glad you did.

(Received a copy from the publisher)

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