Forget Tomorrow by Pintip Dunn
So Forget Tomorrow has a really interesting premise: What if your future was already decided and you receive your future memory on your seventeenth birthday?
Makes for a crackling mix of science fiction/time travel/dystopian themes, huh. Pintip Dunn writes engagingly well and I was swept into the story right from the beginning– chiefly through the lovely portrayal of Callie, the protagonist of the story. We enter the world – with Callie a day shy of her seventeenth birthday in Amerie, where technology has taken over lives and your future is decided and handed over to you as a memory dictating how you would live to achieve the said future.
Now Callie, on expected lines, deviates from the said pattern. Her memory is pretty disturbing, where she walks into a hospital and then kills her own sister, Jessa. Crimes like these usually end up in arrests – by the Future Memory Agency. Callie trusting the authorities obviously doesn’t want this horrifying future to come true and turns herself in to avoid such. But the short jail term turns up nasty truths about the shadowy authorities. And Callie escapes – with help from her childhood crush, Logan.
The tentacles of fate however are twisty and long – Callie and Logan, while discovering themselves and their love for each other – are also busy trying to avoid that very future from coming true. Callie doesn’t want to go back to Eden city – where she’s seen this happen but then, there are half-truths and conspiracies hidden behind the motives of the authorities. All towards a linear future as dictated by them. But Callie is no push over and has secrets up her sleeve that can disrupt well laid plans.
Pintip builds up the tension – bubbling up unnoticed even as we sashay through by-lanes of teenage romance between Callie and her hot boyfriend, Logan. Frankly reading a YA book does have such distractions but I wasn’t complaining. Callie is a pretty nicely fleshed out character - a teenage girl going through the whole turmoil of emotions. Her flighty thoughts are like a Gaitling gun on overdrive, hitting out at random. It’s rapid and it’s breathless but it’s pretty engaging. Logan is the swoon-worthy swimmer boy who provides the heart-aflutter moments in the book but doesn’t really impress. There are other characters like Callie’s mom and her missing father who are far more intriguing and I hope to see more of these guys in the coming books.
The air of mystery darkens and deepens as we move further towards the unexpected climax – with Pintip leaving the door wide open for speculation on the origin of the ‘future’ memory – meat for the next books in this exciting series.
Pintip’s debut is a noteworthy YA story with appealing characters, great prose and a gripping narrative to boot. Definitely not to be forgotten tomorrow.
Makes for a crackling mix of science fiction/time travel/dystopian themes, huh. Pintip Dunn writes engagingly well and I was swept into the story right from the beginning– chiefly through the lovely portrayal of Callie, the protagonist of the story. We enter the world – with Callie a day shy of her seventeenth birthday in Amerie, where technology has taken over lives and your future is decided and handed over to you as a memory dictating how you would live to achieve the said future.
Now Callie, on expected lines, deviates from the said pattern. Her memory is pretty disturbing, where she walks into a hospital and then kills her own sister, Jessa. Crimes like these usually end up in arrests – by the Future Memory Agency. Callie trusting the authorities obviously doesn’t want this horrifying future to come true and turns herself in to avoid such. But the short jail term turns up nasty truths about the shadowy authorities. And Callie escapes – with help from her childhood crush, Logan.
The tentacles of fate however are twisty and long – Callie and Logan, while discovering themselves and their love for each other – are also busy trying to avoid that very future from coming true. Callie doesn’t want to go back to Eden city – where she’s seen this happen but then, there are half-truths and conspiracies hidden behind the motives of the authorities. All towards a linear future as dictated by them. But Callie is no push over and has secrets up her sleeve that can disrupt well laid plans.
Pintip builds up the tension – bubbling up unnoticed even as we sashay through by-lanes of teenage romance between Callie and her hot boyfriend, Logan. Frankly reading a YA book does have such distractions but I wasn’t complaining. Callie is a pretty nicely fleshed out character - a teenage girl going through the whole turmoil of emotions. Her flighty thoughts are like a Gaitling gun on overdrive, hitting out at random. It’s rapid and it’s breathless but it’s pretty engaging. Logan is the swoon-worthy swimmer boy who provides the heart-aflutter moments in the book but doesn’t really impress. There are other characters like Callie’s mom and her missing father who are far more intriguing and I hope to see more of these guys in the coming books.
The air of mystery darkens and deepens as we move further towards the unexpected climax – with Pintip leaving the door wide open for speculation on the origin of the ‘future’ memory – meat for the next books in this exciting series.
Pintip’s debut is a noteworthy YA story with appealing characters, great prose and a gripping narrative to boot. Definitely not to be forgotten tomorrow.
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