From the BLURB:
It began with
four words.
‘I love your
laugh. x'
But that was
twelve years ago. It really began the day Georgina was fired from The Worst
Restaurant in Sheffield (© Tripadvisor) and found The Worst Boyfriend in the
World (© Georgina's best friends) in bed with someone else.
So when her new
boss, Lucas McCarthy, turns out to be the boy who wrote those words to her all
that time ago, it feels like the start of something.
The only problem?
He doesn't seem to remember Georgina – at all…
‘Don't You Forget About Me’ is the latest contemporary
romance novel from British author, Mhairi McFarlane.
Another Mhairi
McFarlane novel is always cause for celebration, and ‘Don't You Forget
About Me’ is no exception. It’s about a young woman called Georgina who has
just turned 30, but finds she increasingly can’t ignore all the ways her life
keeps sputtering to a stop … it’s probably tied to her Dad’s tragic death when
she was a teenager, the high-school sweetheart that got away, and the night
that clouded all of her romantic relationships ever after.
But when said high-school sweetheart returns to town,
and Georgina finds herself inadvertently working at the pub he and his brother
own – she’s both excited and terrified to have him back in her life. Except for
the fact that Lucas claims he can’t remember Georgina at all – suddenly
Georgina feels robbed of their memories and what he meant to her, but at the
same time … maybe this can be a clean-slate for the both of them? Maybe this is
a blessing in disguise?
‘Don't You Forget About Me’ has the feel of Jojo
Moyes’s ‘Me
Before You’ – but only for the fact that both Georgina and Lou Clark are
having to confront a traumatic event from their teenage days, that is maybe part
of the reason they’ve land-locked themselves to their hometowns. It’s one of
the darker backstories McFarlane’s explored in recent books, and I thought she
did is exceptionally well. Maybe a little too well for the heart-in-throat,
cold-sweat breakout that I shared with Georgina as she confronts this moment
from her past. But McFarlane should also be commended for the many types of
abuse she highlights; from micro-aggressions to emotional manipulation,
financial abuse, weaponized public embarrassment, and outright physical abuse.
Everything within is something women will be intimately and tragically familiar
with as the tools of abusers – that McFarlane highlights them with the upmost
gravitas in this contemporary romance is powerful and satisfying, while also
very unsettling.
I also read ‘Don't You Forget About Me’ and felt oddly
reminded of ‘Normal
People’ by Sally Rooney, the adult literary juggernaut novel of last year.
It’s mostly in the fact that both novels begin back in time by exploring the
first romantic relationship of two teenagers, who decide to keep their
dalliance a secret from their friends, family and classmates … in both
instances; Rooney and McFarlane write the “young adult” portion so beautifully
that I actually found myself hoping to stay in that time-period for longer
(maybe even the whole book?). They differ of course though, with the leap-ahead;
Rooney’s novel becomes about these two people trying to always (and sometimes
awkwardly) retrofit themselves around each other’s new adult lives. McFarlane
tears the teenagers apart, and the story is of their reunion as adults – when
only our protagonist is claiming to remember who and what they were to each
other.
This is the crux of McFarlane’s book and the story; as
she asks how long we can go on ignoring the big, impacting moments of our
lives; the ones that built us up, and tore us down. How long can we go on
kidding ourselves, and others – merely by refusing to confront the past?
She delivers so many decisively satisfying
sucker-punches in this book; all of which are tied to Georgina slowly building
herself back up bit by bit. I will say that I thought we’d get a few more
chapters/moments of Georgina and Lucas though (a backstory to Lucas’s dog Keith
is given, and tied to a potential other antagonist from his life – but then
nothing becomes of it and I got the distinct impression that maybe a whole
extra chapter and scenario was oddly axed or forgotten to be added?). It leaves
an odd feeling of not having *quite* consumed the whole – like a piece was
missing?
But that’s a small complain of an otherwise thoroughly
lovely book, from a favourite author. A book that had me weeping in some parts,
and laughing hysterically in others – such is life.
4/5
