Forget This Ever Happened by Cassandra Rose Clark

Disclaimer: I received this arc and e-arc from the publisher. Thanks! All opinions are my own.

Book: Forget This Ever Happened

Author: Cassandra Rose Clarke

Book Series: Standalone

Rating: 4/5

Diversity: Bisexual main character, latina lesbian main character

Recommended For…: thrillers, romance, sci-fi

Publication Date: October 6, 2020

Genre: YA Thriller

Recommended Age: 16+ (homophobia, gaslighting, guns, violence, cops shown sympathetically)

Publisher: Holiday House

Pages: 336

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: Overall this was a good book. I like books that can mess with me a little psychologically and this one did a good job of that. The book did well to develop the characters and the plot.

However, I did have issues that some of the preferred terms (gay, lesbian, bisexual, etc) weren’t used in the book and I thought that the book didn’t do well the action scenes. It was all kinda muddy for me in a lot of the portions were most of the action occurs.

Verdict: It was pretty spooky!