Forget Me Not, by Coleen Paratore

In this fourth installment of the Wedding Planner’s Daughter series, the reader spends a week with Willa Havisham on Cape Cod. Between helping her mom run the Bramblebriar Inn, practicing her skills to become a great writer, hanging with her best girlfriends, and enjoying biking and picnicking dates with her boyfriend (nicknamed JFK), Willa is quite a busy young lady. But Willa is also quite content.

Things start to fall apart when Tina, Willa’s “best friend forever,” becomes distant and JFK spends more time at baseball practice than he does with Willa. While dealing with relationship issues, Willa is also hoping to prove to her mother that she is capable enough to plan a wedding at the Inn for an aunt she has never met. The planning starts off smoothly- Willa expertly selects the location, music, and cake- but Aunt Ruthie, a free spirit and hardcore environmentalist, might be more than Willa can handle. Readers will root Willa on, since it is immediately clear to them that Willa is strong and capable, even if she doesn’t yet realize it herself.

There is a deeper literary aspect to Forget Me Not that keeps this from becoming just another superficial summer novel. Each chapter starts with a quote from Willa’s favorite writer, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Willa also reveals her own journal entries with us, reads excerpts from Alice Hoffman, and has JFK share the insightful rap lyrics he composes. In fact, I loved Willa’s impressive vocabulary so much that I am going to adopt a term from her: “skinny-punch books” which she defines as “short but powerful books.”

Although tween girls will probably want to start with the first book in the series, Forget Me Not is also great as a stand-alone read… for West Coast and East Coast girls alike!

Paratore, C.M. (2009). Forget Me Not. New York: Scholastic. ISBN 978-0-545-09401-6