blog tour: FORGET THIS EVER HAPPENED by cassandra rose clarke

hello all! sorry for the long time, no post. today, im excited to share about the new book, FORGET THIS EVER HAPPENED, by cassandra rose clarke. the sapphic YA speculative horror/fiction came out on tuesday, so today is my day to share about it!

my bite-size review:

read this book if you want…

• twisty, turny, confusion of the best kind
• bisexual main character and lesbian main character
• sapphic love story
• 90’s nostalgia
• small-town vibes
• things that go bump in the night
• a story where zero gays get buried

for my longer review:

i would rate this book 3.75/5 stars.

claire and julie were adorable, hot sapphic messes that i couldn’t help relate to (their ANGST… unparalleled). however, it wasn’t until about 2/3 of the way through this book that i really got truly invested. the book dragged for me a bit, but i think if you are a usual spec fic fan, you might enjoy it better (i rarely read spec fic, but i HAD to bc sapphics in texas in the 90s?? amazing).

i will say, while there’s no homophobia on the page, there is a bit that is mentioned in passing, if that is triggering for you. overall, i think the author does a great job of toeing the line of providing a story where girls can be gay and that’s it, while also addressing that the 90s in the south weren’t exactly welcoming to queer people.

on that note: at first, i was a bit confused why this story was set in the 90’s; i felt that such a story could’ve existed in any timeline (heh… iykyk). but then, the more i thought about, the more i LOVED the author made this choice. LGBT+ people have existed all throughout history, and i think young queer girls who pick up this book will love to see that represented. queerness didn’t just spring up randomly; we’ve always been here.

also, because again, im not a spec fic fan usually, i loved that the author/characters spelled out exactly why things had happened towards the end, if you hadn’t caught on by then. she could’ve easily left us guessing, but that would’ve driven me bat-sh*t bonkers, so bless this author. but one thing that did… well, it didn’t *annoy* me per se, but somehting I was confused about was (spoiler alert): at the very end about the tid bit about them making a movie together. julie, it was obvious, she wanted to go into film. but i felt that was thrown in randomly and there had been zero build up for claire to make one with her. this is probably so not a big deal, but it took me out of the story for a bit, i was that confused (and considering the whole book was a confusion fest, that was saying something lol). (end of spoilers).

all in all, i recommend this book to anyone who wants to escape to a pre-covid world, where two queer girls team up to figure out what is happening in their small town.

click here to buy your own copy and click here to add FORGET THIS EVER HAPPENED by cassandra rose clarke to your goodreads tbr. thanks for reading!