A review by julieannasbooks
Forget This Ever Happened by Cassandra Rose Clarke

4.0

⭐⭐⭐.5
Thank you to Holiday House and TBR and Beyond Tours for an ARC. All opinions are my own.

Forget This Ever Happened has such an interesting an unique premise for those who enjoy YA mysteries with a bit of a sci-fi twist. We start off in a small Texas town in 1993, and for starters, I loved experiencing a YA book in a different era. With the exception of historical YA fiction, I feel like it’s rare to see YA books in decades other than the present. This added several details and interesting elements to this book to make it more fun.

It doesn’t take long before this book begins to enter the mysteries behind the town. And not only do you have the core mystery of what’s happening in Indianola, but you also have the exploration of the families within town and what their histories really are. For this reason, it was hard for me to put the book down – I only really did so when I was too tired to keep reading! This is the kind of book where you get more questions with every answer, and with the supernatural twist you can only keep reading because you don’t know what to expect next.

I also really liked the relationship and the exploration of identity in this book. While this book is overall a light read and doesn’t go too deep into this part of the story, I liked the way the characters began to think about themselves and each other differently over the course of the summer.

I do wish that we got to learn a little more about the monsters though! I loved the oddities surrounding them and I was hoping to learn a little more of their history. I definitely enjoyed the scenes with them as they provided such an eerie vibe to this whole book and would have loved to get a little more time with them or have them be more developed in general – whether that was more dialogue with them or something like Claire and Julie searching previous records at the station.

Overall, Forget This Ever Happened was a pretty unique read! It’s delightfully weird and eerie and works well for YA readers that are looking for a light mystery with some spooky elements.

You can find more of my reviews here: www.julieannasbooks.com