Summary from GoodReads:

Marissa Rogers never wanted to be an alpha; beta suited her just fine. Taking charge without taking credit had always paid off: vaulting her to senior editor at a glossy magazine; keeping the peace with her critical, weight-obsessed mother; and enjoying the benefits of being best friends with gorgeous, charismatic, absolutely alpha Julia Ferrar.

And then Julia gets hit by a cab. She survives with minor obvious injuries, but brain damage steals her memory and alters her personality, possibly forever. Suddenly, Marissa is thrown into the role of alpha friend. As Julia struggles to regain her memory- dredging up issues Marissa would rather forget, including the fact that Julia asked her to abandon the love of her life ten years ago- Marissa’s own equilibrium is shaken.

With the help of a dozen girls, she reluctantly agrees to coach in an after-school running program. There, Marissa uncovers her inner confidence and finds the courage to reexamine her past and take control of her future.

The Art of Forgetting is a story about the power of friendship, the memories and myths that hold us back, and the delicate balance between forgiving and forgetting.

My Review:

I’m going to flat out warn you right now – I did not like this book.  If you have plans to read it, if you dislike reading negative reviews, if you read the book and loved it and would prefer not to read criticism of the book, this would be the point you should stop reading this review.

I don’t like writing negative reviews.  I prefer to pull what I did like out of each book I read and focus on that, with maybe a paragraph or so where I talk about why I didn’t rate the book higher, or what I would have liked to see more of.  Unfortunately, I can’t pull anything positive out of this book – because what it felt to me was that I was reading juvenile prose mixed with a series of Public Service Announcements dealing with issues like bullying, maintaining healthy friendships, eating right, exercising, etc.

I found the dialogue between characters to be flat and just.. boring, I mean – had I been friends with Marissa I don’t know what I would have done to stay awake while she speaks.  The strange little love triangle in this book between creepy, stalker ex (who randomly shows up outside her business in NY after over a decade?) and nice_guy_01 current boyfriend, was dull and lifeless.

I think the most emotion this book invoked in me was a reaction to an opening scene in the book, and it was all downhill from there.

I saw a review that compared The Art of Forgetting to Mean Girls – and while I can see some resemblences, the biggest one is that I didn’t finish that movie and I was highly tempted not to finish this book either.  I just plain didn’t care about Marissa, about Julia, about any of the characters in the book.

Take this review as just the honest opinion of one reader, and do your research if you plan to spend time reading this one.  I’d highly recommend reading a chapter, if a sample is given to you, before making your final decision though.  If you can handle the writing, then it may work for you.

Check out these review(s):

Book’d Out

Bewitched Bookworms