Forget Me Not

It was sweet and fun i had fun reading.

Julie Soto’s debut novel, “Forget Me Not” is a second-chance romance told in dual narratives, alternating between past and present. Ama Torres has branched out in the wedding world to start her own wedding planning business. Despite her personal aversion to marriage—thanks to her mother’s sixteen and counting marriages—Ama loves weddings. “A wedding is not a marriage. Marriages will never be perfect. They’re always a work in progress. But weddings? Weddings are just a moment in time, striving to be perfect.” When a famous Instagram couple hires Ama to plan their over-the-top wedding, Ama stops at nothing to bring the couple a perfect evening (including working through the wedding with broken foot). There is just one problem: the couple has hired florist Elliot Bloom (not to be confused with florist Lily Bloom from Colleen Hoover’s “It Ends with Us”). Elliot’s dream was to become an architect, but when his father dies, Elliot inherits the flower boutique and uses his architectural prowess to build flower archers, walls, and chandeliers. Elliot wants to collect all the flowers that exist, and gets tattoos of the ones he is unable to find or keep due to their rarity. His most prized tattoo, an amaryllis, is on his neck. Elliot’s chapters are from told from his point of view and show readers the past portions of his and Ama’s relationship, and their break-up. The two met while Elliot helped with his father’s wedding events and when Ama was working as a wedding planner for Whitney’s company. When Elliot proposes, Ama’s fear of commitment and marriage lead her to reject the proposal and the two do not see each other for three years. The present-day chapters are told from Ama’s point of view. While against marriage, she is married to her job and her work life. Her life is chaotic and messy; she ignores basic car maintenance and plays Russian roulette with peanut donuts. When the two work together to create the epic wedding of the year—a boost for both of their businesses—the sexual tension in their interactions shines through. Anyone familiar with my reviews will know I don’t appreciate defining women by their obsession with food, especially a particular food item (see my review for “The Wedding Date” and “Maybe in Another Life”). Thanks to Kindle, I know that the word donut is mentioned precisely sixty-four times in this novel. Ama’s obsession is taken to extreme measures when she continuously disregards her severe peanut allergy and orders a peanut donut in her assorted box. The slightest smudge of peanut butter on a different donut could end her life and the scene is so farcical; no one would jeopardize their life over a donut. This was a stellar debut by Soto. I was fortunate to be able to zoom with her to learn about her influences for this novel and to hear about her creative process. I look forward to reading Soto’s next book, an enemies-to-lovers romance out July 2024. Rating 4/5

I'm a 78-year-old guy who had never read a book in the popular romance genre, so this was somwhat of an adventure into a new and strange culture. I was looking for a better understanding and appreciation of the readers as well as the book. I noticed that the writing was somewhat amateurish and many of the events and characters unbelievable. But when I was young I read vast quantities of popular science fiction, so I'm perfectly capable of enjoying all that. I look at the reviews on Goodreads and see that Forget Me Not got 10,943 ecstatic five-star reviews and only 268 grumpy one-star reviews. It's clear that this is a great book that made its target audience very happy. When I read the one-star reviews, they were full of complaints about various things, all of which I had noticed. These things bothered the one-star reviewers a lot. But I just thought they were interesting and enjoyed the book all the same. I liked the relationship between Hazel and Jackie and hoped they would become better communicators with each other. I don't see a long-term future for Ama and Elliot, unless they change a lot. That could certainly happen. They changed some in the course of the book and there's always therapy. The sex scenes were more in the nostalgia than erotica category for me, but they seemed to be having fun. I was fascinated by the event venue for the big wedding and reception. I enjoyed puzzling out why it could never exist in the real world. The wedding dinner space would have to be more than 3,000 square feet. The enormous "flat" roof would have sloped down a couple feet from one end to the other, contained at least 10 tons of noisy AC compressors, and required, for the event permit, two wide and separate stairways. Sacramento does have commercial hay rides in the fall, but they are all pulled by tractors. So I ended up learning something about Sacramento and the McKinley Rose Garden and the Weatherstone coffee shop and I enjoy that. But I'm also happy to ignore all that (and a couple of flying dragons, if necessary) and allow the drama to play out. The story was written entirely in the first person, which was limiting in a way, but did help to answer the obvious question — What on earth were they thinking? I still have no clue as to why Elliot's business plan involves offending new customers as much as possible as soon as they walk through the door. If "Ama" is really sort for "Amaryllis", I think perhaps Elliot was pronouncing it correctly. Some of the reviewers seemed to feel the book was worth the purchase price just for the cover art, but I think it shouild have shown us Elliot's new tattoo.

- Second Chance love - Grumpy/Sunshine - Forced proximity -Dual POV/ M & F narrators -Spice Thank you to Libro.fm for providing me with an audiobook copy of this book. All thoughts and words are my own. This was an adorable, unsuspecting spicy romance. I would say 3 out of 5 peppers for spice level. There were probably 4 or 5 spicy scenes. Second chance love usually isn't my thing but this one was cute! There are flashbacks, which confused me a bit. Maybe if I read the book, it would have made more sense but listening to the "2 years 5 months 23 days before" was just a little weird. However, I still understood the point. If you like the tall, brooding, tatted guy then this one is for you.