Forget Me Not Review — Is It Worth Reading?

Verdict: A sapphic YA amnesia romance with near-unanimous emotional force and a small-town Pennsylvania setting of real specificity, let down by an ending that arrives too fast.

Best for: Readers who want a closed-door queer love story built on longing rather than heat, and who can forgive a resolution that ties itself off in a hurry.

Heat level: ★★☆☆☆ (2/5 — romance.io’s “behind closed doors”)

Rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5 — a 4.23 Goodreads average across 12,176 ratings, marked down for the forty pages every complaint lands on)

Tropes: Amnesia, second chance, secret relationship, small-town claustrophobia, forbidden love, queer awakening, first love, love letters, coming out, the other guy.

Forget Me Not by Alyson Derrick is a standalone sapphic contemporary lesbian romance for young adults, published by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers in April 2023 and still the only novel Derrick has written alone, set in a small ultra-conservative Pennsylvania town where Stevie and Nora have spent two years hiding a relationship and saving for California — until a fall erases those two years and leaves Nora the only person alive who knows what they were.

It has a 4.23 average across 12,176 Goodreads ratings, a longlisting for the 2023 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, a starred Booklist review, and a review section where the enthusiasm is near-unanimous and the objections all cluster in the same final stretch. Both halves of that split are worth understanding before you start.

What Is Forget Me Not About?

Forget Me Not is young adult contemporary fiction doing three jobs at once: it is a second chance romance, a coming-out story, and a small-town novel about the arithmetic of being queer where you cannot afford to be found out. The amnesia is not the obstacle here — the town is. The plan was always to graduate, work, save and disappear to California, and the book is precise about what that costs two teenagers with no money and no adult in their corner.

Stevie wakes in a hospital bed missing everything that made the plan possible: her sexuality, her girlfriend, her estrangement from a devoutly Catholic mother, and every reason behind choices she can no longer account for. Nora has lost nothing and can say nothing, because outing the relationship would out them both. The book runs in Stevie’s first person with Nora’s unsent letters between chapters — not a dual point of view, but close enough that you always know how much is being withheld and from whom.

What Makes This Sapphic YA Amnesia Romance Work

The emotional load: 93% of StoryGraph readers tag the book “emotional” — the highest reading I have logged on a young adult title, and the thing every positive review names first.
Nora: The love interest is the standout rather than the prize. The Lesbrary calls her charming without being one-dimensional, and her letters carry the half of the story Stevie cannot narrate.
The setting: Kirkus singled out the small-town Pennsylvania rendering, and Derrick grew up in that kind of town. The diner shift, the community college, the burn barrels — lived rather than assembled.
The amnesia is used, not deployed: Reviewers who say outright that they dislike amnesia plots are among the book’s strongest advocates, because the question it asks is whether Stevie chooses Nora again with no reasons attached.
It resolves: A standalone with a real happily-ever-after and nothing to buy afterwards, rarer in sapphic YA than it should be.

Book Synopsis

Stevie has two years of secrets and a shoebox to keep them in. She has a girlfriend she cannot mention, a savings tally she checks obsessively, and a departure date: after graduation she and Nora leave the Pennsylvania town they grew up in and drive west, to a California where nobody has to be told anything. Her mother would call the relationship a sin. Her father would call it a phase, loudly, over the television. Stevie has learned to be two people, and decided the cost is temporary.

Then she falls. When she comes round, the last two years are simply not there. She is younger in every way that matters — closeted without knowing it, close to her parents, at ease with a friend group she had quietly outgrown, and mystified by the life she has apparently been living. She does not know why she has been picking up shifts. She does not know what the money was for. She does not know Nora at all.

Nora knows everything and can say none of it. The truth means outing herself where that is not survivable, and asking a girl with no memory of loving her to take it on faith. So she writes letters she does not send, and waits, and watches Stevie steered gently back toward the life she had escaped — including toward Ryan, the boy at the diner her friends are cheerfully certain she had a crush on. The question is not whether Stevie remembers. It is whether remembering is what she needs.

My Review

The premise could have been unbearable and is not. Amnesia in young adult fiction has every opportunity to become a soap plot, and Derrick sidesteps it by refusing to make the memory loss the point. What Stevie loses is not a set of facts about Nora; it is the two years of nerve it took to become someone who could love Nora in that town. The facts are recoverable. The nerve is the book. That is why readers who open by saying they hate amnesia plots keep turning up at five stars.

The second strength is structural. Nora’s letters do what a dual point of view could not: they give you her grief without giving her a voice inside the plot, which is exactly her problem. She cannot speak, so she writes, and you read what Stevie never will. It carries most of the book’s ache. The characterisation holds up around it — 91% of StoryGraph readers call the cast loveable, and Booklist, in a starred review, called the book “a punch to the gut in the best way.”

Where it struggles is the ending, and this is not my private objection — it is the most repeated criticism in the low-star reviews and it recurs at three stars too. Readers describe the last forty pages as carrying more story than the two hundred and fifty before them. The flashpoint is the parents, who travel from the position that made the California plan necessary to something like acceptance in a span most readers found unearned. Around that sit flat friends, antagonists tipping toward caricature, and prose a steady minority finds juvenile. Some of that is adults reading a book written for teenagers. The ending is not.

One expectation to reset. This arrived on BookTok with a guarantee attached — that it would make you cry — and a measurable number of readers report that it did not. Forget Me Not is sad rather than devastating, and its best passages are small: a shoebox, a letter, a girl working a shift for a reason she has forgotten. If you were promised annihilation, calibrate. If annihilation put you off, relax.

My honest note: A four-star book that spends three hundred pages earning its ending and then rushes it. If a hurried last act ruins a book for you, this one will cost you a star. If it does not, this is the most emotionally intelligent thing Derrick has published.

Element	In Forget Me Not
Central relationship	Stevie & Nora — secret girlfriends of two years, second chance after one forgets
Core tropes	Amnesia, second chance, secret relationship, forbidden love, queer awakening, first love
Setting	A small ultra-conservative town in Pennsylvania, with California as the escape plan
Heat level	2/5 — behind closed doors
Series	Standalone — complete arc, an HEA, nothing to read next
Content notes	Homophobia and a homophobic slur, racism and racist micro-aggressions, child abuse and a teenager thrown out for being gay, hospital and head-injury content, toxic friendship, underage drinking

How Spicy Is Forget Me Not?

A 2/5, and unusually for a young adult title there is a proper source for the number. romance.io does have an entry and rates the steam level “behind closed doors” — the second of its five bands, a step above the 1/5 it gives Derrick’s co-written She Gets the Girl. Two other sources agree on placement and disagree on emphasis: the Junior Library Guild, which selected it for grades nine and up, flags “strong sexual content/themes”, while StoryGraph readers log sexual content as minor. Sex exists here and the door closes on it.

What is worth flagging in advance is subject matter rather than explicitness. The warnings readers submit most often are homophobia, racism and child abuse, all three logged as graphic on StoryGraph, one covering a side character thrown out of home for being a lesbian. No reviewer I read flags anything beyond a closed door. In the same band, Last Night at the Telegraph Club carries the identical romance.io rating and Under the Udala Trees sits at 2/5.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you want a love story where the obstacle is a place rather than a misunderstanding, you read for emotional weight over heat, you like a structural device doing real work, and you want a standalone that finishes.

You may want to skip it if: a rushed final act ruins a book for you, you need antagonists with interior lives rather than positions, plain young-adult prose pulls you out of a story, or you have no patience for amnesia as a premise.

In short: three hundred pages of carefully earned feeling, and forty pages that spend it faster than they should.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (August 2026)

Three years on, this book has an unusually settled reputation. The Goodreads distribution is the striking thing: 43% five stars, 39% four, under 3% at one or two. StoryGraph agrees almost exactly at 4.22 across 3,853 reviews and reports a 1% did-not-finish rate — as low as anything I have logged, against the 9% that made Her Spell That Binds Me a flight risk. People who start this book finish it. The institutional reception matched the popular one: a National Book Award longlisting, a Goodreads Choice nomination, a Junior Library Guild selection and four positive trade reviews, one starred. BookTok activity is real and largely organic, driven by independent creators rather than the author’s own account, which she shares with her wife and co-author Rachael Lippincott — though at least one widely shared post carries a Simon Teen partnership tag, so some of the early lift was paid. My Reddit read did not complete this session, so treat the absence of Reddit evidence as unmeasured rather than as a finding.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The feeling, first and by a distance — “sob” is the recurring word, and 93% of StoryGraph readers tag the book emotional. Then Nora, consistently named the better-drawn of the two leads, and the letters that carry her. Then the setting, which readers from small conservative towns call accurate rather than atmospheric. A notable minority arrives hostile to the premise and converts, opening by saying amnesia plots do not work for them and closing at five stars. Natalie Naudus’s narration has its own following, and Kirkus, reviewing the audiobook, credited her with catching Stevie’s playfulness.

Prefer audio? Listen to Forget Me Not on Libro.fm — the audiobook shop that supports independent bookstores.

What readers argue about and complain about: The ending, above everything. The mechanism they name is compression — the last forty pages carry more plot than the two hundred and fifty before them, and the parents read as a reversal rather than an arc, with several reviewers putting the turnaround inside the final few pages. Second, the supporting cast: Stevie’s friends get called bad friends as a craft complaint, and the adults tip toward caricature, one reviewer summarising that every straight white person in the book is villainous. Third, the prose, which a steady minority calls juvenile — one reader notes it is indistinguishable from the novels Derrick co-wrote, which cuts either way. One reviewer who identifies as a traumatic brain injury nurse questions the plausibility of Stevie’s recovery; a single voice rather than a theme. Opinions divide hardest on the parents — the arc the low-star reviews call unearned is the one Jude in the Stars praises for its care.

The standalone question worth asking first: it is a true standalone. One volume, a complete arc, an HEA, nothing announced and nothing owed. Where readers go next is Derrick’s co-written work with Rachael Lippincott, and the numbers are worth knowing: She Gets the Girl, the bestseller that made her name, carries a 4.07 average across roughly 78,000 Goodreads ratings — six times the audience and a lower score than her solo book. The co-writes are lighter and far less interested in hurting you.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Forget Me Not have a happy ending?

Yes. It is a standalone with a complete arc and a happily-ever-after, no sequel and nothing left open. The most common complaint is that the ending arrives too quickly, not that it disappoints.

How spicy is Forget Me Not?

A 2/5. romance.io rates the steam level “behind closed doors,” its second band, and StoryGraph readers log sexual content as a minor warning only. Sex exists in the book; none of it is on the page.

Is Forget Me Not part of a series?

No. It is a standalone and Derrick’s only solo novel. Her other books — She Gets the Girl, Make My Wish Come True and the novella Joy to the Girls — are co-written with Rachael Lippincott.

Is there an audiobook?

Yes — narrated by Natalie Naudus for Simon & Schuster Audio, about 7 hours 44 minutes, released on publication day in April 2023. Kirkus reviewed the narration separately and praised it, and listeners rate it the better way in.

Is Forget Me Not sad?

Sad rather than devastating. StoryGraph readers tag it emotional 93% of the time and hopeful 70%, which is the accurate balance. A measurable number of readers arrived expecting to sob because BookTok said so, and did not.

If You Loved Forget Me Not, Read These Next

The obvious next step is She Gets the Girl, Derrick’s co-written debut with Rachael Lippincott — the same sapphic YA voice at a lower heat level and a lighter emotional register. For the same closed-door band with the same small-community pressure driving the romance, Last Night at the Telegraph Club moves it to 1950s San Francisco. And if the small-town-queer-kid-with-a-plan engine is the draw, You Should See Me in a Crown runs it as comedy rather than grief.

For more in this register, browse our sapphic second chance romance reading list or the full Book Reviews collection.

The Bottom Line

Forget Me Not asks whether love survives the loss of its own reasons, and for three hundred pages it answers with real care. The emotional writing lands, Nora is a genuinely good character, and the small-town Pennsylvania setting is specific in a way most young adult fiction does not bother with. It is also rushed at the close, built around a supporting cast thinner than its leads, and written plainly enough that some adult readers will bounce. Whether that trade works depends on what a hurried last act costs you — but the reader who absorbs it gets a complete, unusually well-observed queer coming-of-age with nothing to buy afterwards. Check Forget Me Not on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, Forget Me Not ranks as a high-reception sapphic YA tearjerker — emotionally precise and well made, held back by a compressed ending, and best approached for the letters and the setting rather than the amnesia hook.