Remind Me How This Ends…

Book Description:

It’s the summer after high school ends and everyone is moving on. Winning scholarships. Heading to uni. Travelling the world. Everyone except Milo Dark. Milo feels his life is stuck on pause. His girlfriend is 200km away, his mates have bailed for bigger things and he is convinced he’s missed the memo reminding him to plan the rest of his life. Then Layla Montgomery barrels back into his world after five years without so much as a text message.

As kids, Milo and Layla were family friends who shared everything – hiding out in her tree house, secrets made at midnight, and sunny afternoons at the river. But they haven’t spoken since her mum’s funeral. Layla’s fallen apart since that day. She pushed away her dad, dropped out of school and recently followed her on-again-off-again boyfriend back to town because she has nowhere else to go. Not that she’s letting on how tough things have been.

What begins as innocent banter between Milo and Layla soon draws them into a tangled mess with a guarantee that someone will get hurt. While it’s a summer they’ll never forget, is it one they want to remember?

A boy-meets-girl-again story from the award-winning author of The Intern and Faking It.

My Thoughts:

I don’t read a lot of YA fiction anymore. For a time it seemed to get overrun with paranormal themes that became a little too same-same for my liking. But this novel, Remind Me How This Ends, takes me back to why I used to love YA.

In a nutshell, this is a terrific novel. Gabrielle Tozer has created two great teenagers in Milo and Layla and reading their story was a real joy. Heartbreaking at times, funny quite often, and all too relatable, even though I’m a parent of teens instead of an actual teen myself.

I think this novel is highly accessible for all ages of teen through to adult, a little slice of contemporary small town Australia that neither gives a negative slant on being a teen nor imbues them with supernatural powers. A great novel for fans of ‘real life’ inspired YA fiction.

Remind Me How This Ends is book 16 in my 2017 Australian Women Writers Challenge.