Forget Me Not

OK, so this book has a beautiful cover, just beautiful! (the blue and the title look so cool and the poppies too!) It gives you YA romance vibes for some reason... (it's close but not really) So the story revolves around Calli who has Tourettes but also OCD, trichotillomania(pulling hair) and anxiety which often come with TS. So she is looked as a freak by others and even her mom who is very absent and always changing boyfriends and after breakups changing homes without even asking her daughter or anything. Calli starts a new school for the 10th time and hates how her friendships never last. In the book Calli becomes more confident of herself and her tics and doesn't hide who she is. I loved her love for astronomy and especially the moon and sharing that with her new friend Jinsong. It was a cute book and Calli's perspective was written in poetry which I liked. I felt bad for Calli when people bullied her but SpoilerBeatriz turns out to have a tragic past of her mom abondoning her so she takes her anger on others and is left alone with no friends which was sad and what Calli gave her was so sweet and it actually impacted her! and her dad's death left such a big impact in her and her mom which is the reason why she never feels happy and looks for a partner so they can have a better life. I liked Jinsong but I also didn't like that they didn't leave is a frienship but had to make them kiss... uhh. Anyways a beautiful book and I actually liked that Spoiler Calli changes house again and she is happy and confident with herself this time. She speaks up to her mom and has a new kind stepdad which may last (hopefully) and she embraces herself in the school and doesn't let TS define her and her worth!!! Also I liked that Calli and Jinsong still kept their friendship with emails! I recommend this book to anyone who likes MG or YA with neurodivergent characters and drama, bullying, school stuff etc. Also remeber the author kept it realistic because she experienced Calli's struggles and I love and support own voices authors!

~Full review here on The Bent Bookworm!~Ancient Greeks called the planets planetoibecause it means “wanderers,”and because planets don't stayinonefixedplacethey're constantly moving,wandering between the stars,like me.Calliope June has Tourette's Syndrome. She also has either an extremely heartbroken or extremely immature mother, I can't decide which. I waffled between feeling sorry for her mom, or being absolutely furious with her. Regardless, Cassie has lived in 10 different places in the past 9 years. Every time her mom breaks up with a guy, they move. With no warning. While Callie recognizes that her mom loves her, she also slowly comes to see that she is also wrong in some of the ways she “shows” her love. I was really happy when, towards the end, Cassie found the inner strength to confront her mother about some of those things.Callie's tics cause her a lot of embarrassment. She tries so hard to control them, but that only seems to make them worse. Her consciousness of them and yet the constant betrayal by her body were very eye-opening. I've never known anyone with TS and my only real media exposure is the bartender in The Boondocks Saints. It's sad that there isn't more education on this condition and that so much fun is made of it. The kids at Callie's school never thought twice, and even her own mother is embarrassed by it. HER MOTHER! Callie is embarrassed enough, she certainly doesn't need anyone telling her to try to stop, or hide her tics. Despite all that, she is such a huge-hearted person and continues to pick herself up and continue on. Sure, she has emotional moments – but we all do, and most of us don't struggle with a health condition that has our own body backfiring on us every second of every day.I loved the verse in this book – and I am so, SO far from being a poetry person. In fact, when I first saw that this book was written in verse I nearly didn't look any further because of that. But I was intrigued by the concept, and I've never read anything that had a character with TS, so I read the excerpt on Amazon and I had to have the rest of the book RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW. Turns out that there are two points of view in the story: Callie's, the verse, and Jinsong's, the prose. It works beautifully. The verse feels like a stream-of-consciousness narration.The characters took me back to middle school. Callie and Jinsong are so very real. Jinsong made me angry for awhile, because even though he likes Callie at first he feels too embarrassed by her to stand up for her. It was really sickening...but he grows. He finds his backbone, and his heart, and it's just the most adorable thing ever.My heart broke for Callie the entire way through the book. The amount of resilience and tenacity she shows is incredible. Even when the very person who should help her and care for her the most barely gives her the time of day. Also, kids are so, so MEAN. I loved that as embarrassed and hurt as she would sometimes be though, Callie still found it in her to fight back.“They all have friendship lockets.Every girl at Black Ridge has one,except you.”I glance at Beatriz's neck.“And you.”BURN, baby, burn.This was a phenomenal book. I really felt like the author put us right into Callie's shoes. The writing was flawless – not once did I feel jolted out of the story by any sort of author intervention, and the ending...well. My heart broke into a thousand pieces. But it's worth it! It fits. And there is hope, because Callie is not the sort of person to let her condition or her mother stop her.There are a lot of quotes from the book that I would love to share. I bookmarked SO many. But I really think this is one you need to go read for yourself. So please, go buy a copy or request your library to buy one!Blog Twitter Bloglovin Instagram Google+