BOOK REVIEW
Book Review: Forget Me Not by Ellie Terry
***PLEASE NOTE THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS***
I listened to the middle grade/YA novel, Forget Me Not by Ellie Terry, and was amazed by the lyrical language used to explore the often-misunderstood disorder Tourette’s Syndrome. When I chose the title from the digital library, I was unaware it is a novel in verse. I ordered a paperback copy when I finished the audio version to see whether the lyricism stemmed from the beautiful narration on the audio or the text. It is both.
The author narrates in two distinct voices: Calliope and Jinsong. The first main character, Calliope, is a pre-teen with Tourette’s Syndrome. Her disorder manifests in facial tics, uncontrolled movements, as well as, repetitive vocal sounds. Her mother is a flighty, codependent sort of person who fell apart after her husband, Calliope’s father, died in a car accident. Whenever the mother breaks up with a boyfriend, they move to another town, city, or state. The reader is introduced to Calliope as she is moving to her tenth school. She had been told by her mother and a specialist to keep her diagnosis a secret, but she cannot suppress all of her tics and is bullied. She finds friendship with her neighbor, Jinsong, who struggles with embarrassment over her tics. The reader is privy to…
