Forget Tomorrow (Forget Tomorrow, #1)

by Pintip Dunn

[nannah]

Ahh, I wish I liked this book more, because I really felt a connection with the author and loved the book's concept. I stumbled upon a blog interview with Pintip Dunn and read about how she had wanted to be an author ever since she was little, and how she valued diversity, etc., and just have wanted to read a book by her for a while now. Unfortunately, this book just didn't live up to the expectation I may have built up in my head for her.

Book content warnings:
abuse
rape

Every person receives a "future memory" on their seventeenth birthday: a brief snippet of their future sent back by their older selves to help guide them through life. In Calla's case, her future memory does less to guide her and more to condemn her to a life behind bars. She's sent to Limbo, a prison for people who haven't committed crimes yet, but whose future memories prove them to be criminals. But she doesn't stay long. When her crush from four years ago breaks her out, she becomes part of something much bigger than future memory, Limbo, or the people running it.

This book has so much potential. There's some great science fiction time travel content that's really intriguing, but unfortunately all that content takes so much of a backstep to the book's romance I think it could probably fill about twenty pages of the book's 336. Not that all the romantic plot/development isn't great, but it felt like the publishers/editors/(someone else?) were either pushing Pintip Dunn to finish/wrap up her story fast, hence cutting short the actual plot and plot elements.

Much of the first half of the story was extremely well crafted and paced. I sympathized with Calla and her problems, personal and larger-scale, and even felt drawn to her love interest because she was drawn to him. But as the book passed the halfway point things began to feel rushed, and then really rushed, and then really rushed (like again, her publishers or something needed her to meet a deadline or maybe a shorter word count [?]).

The minute the climax ended, the book ended. It led to such a jarring stop that left me feeling so unsatisfied, and I get that it's a first book, but it still needs to have some sort of ending! Also, Calla's motivation for everything in the book is her little sister, Jessa. But at the very ending, she kills herself in front of Jessa. WHY would she risk giving her sister such awful PTSD by doing it right in front of her?? I get that it's dramatic and all, but if she loved Jessa so much, that's just ... you don't do that (and I'm speaking as someone who has PTSD myself). I just can't get over this. I can't.

I don't know if I'll be continuing with this particular trilogy, but I will definitely try something else by Pintip Dunn.