Review: I Remember You by Cathleen Davitt Bell
SYNOPSIS:
Seventeen-year-old Lucas is a star hockey player who’s headed for the marines as soon as high school is over. Then there’s Juliet, straight-A student and rigorous debater, whose college trajectory has been carefully planned for years. They couldn’t be more different. But from the moment Lucas sees Juliet, he swears he remembers their first kiss. Their first dance. Their first fight. In fact, Lucas knows everything that’s going to happen between them – not because he can predict the future, but because he claims to have already lived it.
Juliet doesn’t know whether to be afraid for herself – or for Lucas. Because as Lucas’s memories occur more frequently, they also grow more ominous. All Juliet wants is for Lucas to be safe with her in the present. But how do you hold onto someone you love now when they’ve begun slipping away from you in the future?
REVIEW:
*Book Received in Exchange for Honest Opinion/Review*
This book had the potential for greatness and I have picked it up several times over the past three years in an attempt to read it but I never got into it. So I have spent the past week forcing myself to finish this book. This is not because the story was bad, but because there were several fatal flaws that really take away from the story.
So I will start with the good, I adored Lucas and Juliet’s relationship. The playfulness, the intensity, the passion was like life flowing through my veins. I was invigorated and in awe of the nostalgia it brought back from high school. They are a perfect contrast to each other and I loved how easily their relationship read. But, Juliet’s best friend, Rosemary, is a garbage character and her side story line really took away focus from the main story.
The real issue is that if you didn’t buy and read this book at the exact date it was released, it reads as dated. There are references to politics, presidents, pay-phones, and the Iraq war that hadn’t even occurred yet. Which is rather confusing considering the book came out in 2015 but it was written as if it was well I don’t know what the target time line was other than George Bush was president. This was very odd to me, I don’t understand why an author would release a contemporary book that is dated like this.
Next was the issue of time travel, if you can even call it that? There is no closure or explanation for what Lucas was experiencing, I am honestly really confused as to why the Cathleen completely avoided elaborating on this. As a reader, its extremely frustrating not to have closure in a story. Which brings me to my final pet peeve, the ending, that again, provides no closure! What the heck, I don’t want to read a story that just leaves me with a bunch of open ended questions. And for these reasons, I now recall why I never got into this story and why I won’t be picking it up again.
LINKS:
Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes and Noble
