Review of Forget Me Not by Julie Soto
Hello lovely bookworms and welcome back to another review! My choice book might surprise you this month, being that I’m a typically a fantasy reader, but I do love a romance every once in a while.
While spending time (arguably too much time) scrolling social media, I came across Forget Me Not by Julie Soto multiple times, and I remember this because of that stunning cover. (No seriously, it’s so eye catching.) I can be quite picky with the type of contemporary romance books I enjoy. When I learned the premise of Forget Me Not (and more importantly, their careers), I knew this one would be for me.
So join me as I deep dive into Forget Me Not by Julie Soto. Reader beware: there are spoilers!
The Premise
An ambitious wedding planner who doesn’t believe in lasting marriages and a grumpy florist have a messy breakup. Years pass without having to interact until an influencer decides she wants them both to do her wedding. Forced to work together, they must plan the most high-profile wedding of their careers while navigate the tumultuous tension still taught between them.
The Characters
Ama
“You were in those skinny jeans and that plaid shirt. It made you look like a missionary come to save my filthy soul.”
The aforementioned wedding planner is Ama Torres, who worked under a well-known wedding planner since she was eighteen before starting her own wedding planning business. After watching her boss turn away potential clients because their budgets were too small, she decided she could work within that restraint and give them the wedding of their dreams.
Why does Ama not believe in lasting marriages? Her mother has been married and divorced over a dozen times in Ama’s lifetime, resulting in some good ole mommy issues and a myriad of (ex)step siblings. I loved getting to see this out of our FMC and seeing how parental choices affect kids lifelong. I’ll touch on this later in this blog.
Ama’s energy is contagious and her drive is commendable, all packaged into a 5 foot-ish woman who needs to wear heels to not be treated as a child. During the wedding planning scenes, we get to experience how her brain works in real time as she navigates her clients into the decisions for their wedding.
I don’t have any critics as her as a character. She’s exactly the type of character I enjoy reading, from both her personality to her having something that she’s really passionate about.
Elliot
“Flowers are better than people.”
Elliot, the grumpy florist, is a wannabe architect who took over his father’s florist shop after he died. At the beginning of the book, we meet him post breakup, where he wants nothing to do with Ama. However, when the influencer and her fiancee are set on using him for their florals, he has to work with the woman who broke his heart. (This sets us up from some crazy tension).
While being the epitome of Grumpy, Elliot does have a soft spot for people who are inherently nice people. Regardless of his attitude toward Ama at the beginning of the story, he has sweet moments with his clients, with Ama’s step siblings, and with Ama herself (later on in the story).
His partial college experience in architect school lends its hand to him building more elaborate floral designs that high end clients, like this influencer, are drawn to. Through his POV, it was fun to watch him resist taking over the flower shop to him being covered in tattoos of flowers and creating unique arrangements of people based on the book, “The Language of Flowers.”
My biggest critique from Elliot is that everything we know about his personality is how it relates to his relationship with Ama. A dimension was missing from his personality and left me wishing we had at least one more thing about him that he learned. It would’ve been great to see a parallel from Ama’s relationship with her mom, to see how Elliot interacts with his parents—especially his mother, who felt like I knew nothing about besides that she was a senator.
Their Story
Forget Me Not unfolds with a dual narrative, Ama being in the present and Elliot in the past. With Elliot’s past storyline, we discover what led to their strained relationship (or lack thereof) in the present timeline. This split worked very well and kept me reading because I wanted to know how their relationship fell apart.
Elliot sees Ama as a talented wedding designer who was under-used and held back by her previous employer (including when a minor SA scene where Ama is a assaulted by a groomsman, her employer blames her). As they work on more weddings together, he catches feelings, and she just wants things to be casual—no relationship.
Through his POV, we watch as they fall for each other during the weddings they work on with one another to their heartbreaking end.
In the present timeline, we watch as Ama grows uncharacteristically quiet and nervous when Elliot is first brought into the influencer’s wedding. She was so nervous, in fact, that she almost didn’t take the job and she didn’t want to call him on the phone to set up an appointment for them. Being the professional she is, Ama sucks it up and is put back into Elliot’s orbit.
From the first scene of Ama and Elliot together, we can see the tension between them, even if Elliot refused to look at her or acknowledge her. Slowly, his care for her began to show, though I understand other people’s critiques that he was too mean or disinterested in her to be considered a love interest. I’d like to counter that it made his reaction feel more realistic to how messy real-life relationships can be.
Going back to the dual timelines, possibly my favorite thing about this novel is that both timelines had a strong sense of progress that played off one another. And when they meetup toward the end? Absolute gold. I loved that we learned what the final nail in the coffin was for their relationship as we were watching Elliot go above and beyond for Ama on the biggest day of her career. By the end, I felt like I had a strong sense of their history and relationship that made the story feel more whole for me as a reader.
Themes in Forget Me Not by Julie Soto
Childhood Trauma from Parents/Mom
Let’s talk about mommy issues because I love a messy story and a messier character. Ama is clearly deeply affected by her mother’s lifestyle choice of continuously get married and divorced. Not only had she never had a serious relationship because of it, it led her to leave Elliot and expect him to never put a label on their relationship, even though they clearly loved each other. I wish I knew what happened to her mother to make her that way to fully see the generational trauma that is now on Ama to break because there is clearly something there. I believe this theme of parent-caused trauma was very well executed and we could clearly see that Ama was in a weird place because of their relationship.
Professional Gaslighting and Self Worth
Whitney Harrison, the wedding planner Ama worked under starting at eighteen, is a level ten gaslighter. She took advantage of Ama’s inexperience and lack of understanding from a workplace perspective. With Ama never having worked anywhere besides under her, she was primed to fall for Whitney’s attacks on her self worth—especially when she works under her. (Also, how awful was it that she blamed Ama for being assaulted? I hate this lady.) Over Ama’s career, she criticized the thing that made Ama good at her job (and probably made her better than Whitney). For her storyline to end in a horse meme and the implosion of her career was just so satisfying.
The Writing
Honestly, I didn’t take much note of Julie Soto’s writing beyond how easy it was to slip into her book. It was accessible and easy to digest, which I typically prefer in a novel, anyway. I will for sure pick up the next book she publishes.
Do I recommend Forget Me Not by Julie Soto?
Absolutely. I rated this book five stars and made my husband read it right away. He’s been meaning to try a romance book for a few months and this seemed like the perfect choice (and not just because of the impeccable spice in this book).
Conclusion
Forget Me Not by Julie Soto was a fun and fast read with a wonderful Grumpy x Sunshine dynamic that made me want to keep reading. Thank you Julie Soto for this book and thank you to the readers who took the time to read this review! If you haven’t read Forget Me Not (sorry about the spoilers), checkout the links below to grab your copy.
And before you navigate away, check out my favorite quotes from Forget Me Not below, as well as my previous book reviews.
Happy reading!
Eri Leigh
Bookshop.org | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
Forget Me Not Details:
Publication Date: July 11, 2023
Number of Pages: 352 pages (Paperback)
Publisher: Forever
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Quotes
“No one should have to wait for happiness a second longer than they have to.”
“She may not need to define long-term, but to me, forever sounds nice.”
“You may think everything ends one day, but you haven’t had ‘everything’ with me.”
“There’s no falling out of love for people like you and me.”
“I don’t give a fuck who it is. I want you to look debauched when I’m debauching you.”
