Review | (Don't You) Forget About Me

(Don't You) Forget About Me by Kate Karyus Quinn
June 2014 by HarperTeen
336 pages
Two stars


"Welcome to Gardnerville.
A place where no one gets sick. And no one ever dies.

Except...
There’s a price to pay for paradise. Every fourth year, the strange power that fuels the town exacts its payment by infecting teens with deadly urges. In a normal year in Gardnerville, teens might stop talking to their best friends. In a fourth year, they’d kill them.

Four years ago, Skylar’s sister, Piper, was locked away after leading sixteen of her classmates to a watery grave. Since then, Skylar has lived in a numb haze, struggling to forget her past and dull the pain of losing her sister. But the secrets and memories Piper left behind keep taunting Skylar—whispering that the only way to get her sister back is to stop Gardnerville’s murderous cycle once and for all." - Goodreads



I don't usually dislike books. Most of the time I just won't finish them. I really wanted to like this one. One of the biggest things that attracted me to the book was the cover and the title. I went into it, not really knowing anything about it, just what I read in the Goodreads summary.

The plot of this book is so interesting to me. Gardnerville is a town where no one ever gets sick or dies. Except, every four years something strange happens to the teens in the town. They start doing things out of their character, and it leads to tragedy. Our main character Skylar's sister was part of a fourth year and was locked into the Gardnerville asylum. There's things she can't remember about what happened and Skylar struggles to remember what happened while trying to stop it from happening again. 

I won't say that this book is badly written, because that wasn't what I disliked about it. I just found this book to be really confusing. I read the entire thing and I have little idea of what happened. I have a general idea, but I never felt connected to the book and I never understood exactly what was going on. It was so interesting, but it just wasn't easy to follow. Every chapter switches between the past and the present. As the book progresses you get more details of what occurred, but still get more confused. Maybe it was just me, but I had a really hard time staying focused and interested at times. I had to take a few breaks while reading it because I just had no idea what I was reading.

I heard amazing reviews about the ending of the book specifically. I found the ending to be really unique, but I didn't want to read the whole book just to get to the ending, if that makes sense. I think there are a lot of people out there who will follow this book and love it. I'm just not one of them. It wasn't my cup of tea.