Even the Internet has gone Unremembered.

Imagine a life where you couldn't access Tumblr gifs because you didn't know what they were.



That is no life at all, I tell you. Yet that's the one Seraphina leads in Unremembered by Jessica Brody.

Enjoyment Level: Mild. This is one of those enjoy the journey more than the destination books. The build-up is equal parts intriguing and intense and all you want are answers. However, the answers come way too swift and turned out to be not as exciting by far.

Likelihood I'll be continuing the series/author's work: I'd never read anything by Jessica Brody before though I did hear somewhere that her contemporary romances be ballin' so combine that with the fact that I own one of her books and you've got me all curious and expectant. As a first dive into her work, Unremembered by Jessica Brody appealed to me on enough levels that I'm not scared of her or furious with her and can safely anticipate the next thing she writes while indulging in past works in the meantime.



I really love the cover of Unremembered by Jessica Brody for it's simplicity and its simultaneous ability to communicate what this story's all about. Then, when you go and read the book you learn how much MORE the cover resembles the story. It's perfect and pretty and I DIG IT, man. Which totes had me going soft on it by the time I got going on it.

Ok, So What Had Happened Was: There was a crash.



A plane crash in which this violet-eyed beauty wakes up among a slew of dead people and has no recollection of how she got there, you know, like whether or not she was ever on the plane to begin with. Because if she was, how did she survive? And when she wakes up to doctors and nurses scratching their heads, news reports of a girl with no one to claim her, a world she can't recall, she suspects that she is shopping in the Not Normal department. When a boy, whom she thinks is familiar though she can't recognize him, comes out of the blue to warn her that not only is she not supposed to be there, she is in grave danger because, yeah, there be bad peeps after her model-worthy bum.

The internal debate begins: is the boy telling the truth or should she just discard him because he's most likely crazy? But as more oddities crop up, you know which side she starts swaying toward.

Violet/Sera's frustration is palpable and more than warranted. She wakes up to nonanswers and evasions, then ludicrous suggestions from a perfect, though handsome, stranger and she no idea how to tell fact from fiction when she remembers absolutely NOTHING. It's bad enough she doesn't know Tumblr from Facebook but simple day-to-day things and phrases might as well have come from another planet. Amnesia, DUH, isn't a pretty picture but Brody especially paints all that turmoil beautifully. Then there's also the denial, because some part of her whispers acceptance when all she wants is to start over, lead a normal life, yearning toward the haven her foster parents have created. I got this girl, and she made me sad, happy, frustrated, and all I wanted were the answers she's not sure she wants though some part of her cries out for them.

Between an uber friendly and sweet nurse and her foster parents, Heather and Scott, she's got caring people revolving around her and that's great. I just didn't like how easily they were dismissed at a certain point in the story. Same problem with Cody, Violet/Sera's younger foster brother who provides so many of the LOL moments with his sarcastic bitter nerdiness. She would get what she wanted out of him, liked him well enough too, but then he gets dropped and taken from the story with such a lame cover up. Zen, the boy from thin air, has a sweet appeal, his loneliness and despairing over our MC evident but not quite touching enough.

FYI, romance is my favoritest thing ever in ever, so it's GOTTA be good. One of the bummers of Unremembered by Jessica Brody is a) the not enough deets and b) I was terribly amused by these crazy kids. Because, check it, the two of them? They're in love and it's all beautiful roses and yeah it's kind of cute, but the fact is they make TITANIC decisions about their lives, their futures without any conception of the consequences: you know, like life without family, without spoonfed support, and, even more importantly, PROTECTION. From the baddies. It all just felt very dramatic and naive and yeah, I get that I'm reading a YA about a 16-year-old but I really wished that this would've been more developed. If not the two characters coming to their own conclusions and actually reflecting, then some responsible adults doing that instead of encouraging them to follow their hearts to their deaths. That would've been a refreshing change. Those crazy kids.



And, you know what? I didn't COMPLETELY buy their romance. There're aren't any of those deeply felt sparks, that awesome chemistry and banter that shows they know and get each other. In fact, it's kind of weird actually considering... Well, I can't quite say for fear of spoilers.

Even though I skimmed through the end, I liked this book. I wasn't enormously effected by it, but it's one of those nice and enjoyable books. Not good, not best, but much better than okay. A few development issues aside, with a little more work Brody can turn the overall series into a good set of books. The potential is TOTES there, and it IS an interesting start to a new sci-fi series.

I just wouldn't get all cray cray about it if I was you.

I received an unsolicited ARC from Macmillan in exchange for an honest review.