It's been too long since I've held something in my hands as well-crafted as this, and I am happily (no pun intended) satisfied with my choice of final summer reading. This book, published in 2015, is an intriguing, eye-catching blend of contemporary YA and science fiction. It’s from the first-person POV of Aaron Soto, a high school student living in the Bronx with his mother and older brother in a one-bedroom apartment. He has a group of friends on his block (a bunch of hilarious, heartbreaking, and memorable characters) who like to fool around and play manhunt and a serious, devoted relationship with a girl named Genevieve.
Introduced in the first sentence of the book is a new institution named Leteo (the Spanish translation of the river Lethe—the river of forgetfulness from Greek mythology). Leteo provides a procedure to its patients that suppresses and makes them “forget” harmful and sorrowful memories…with some side effects, of course. Though it seemed foreign and unfitting for a story about friendship and happiness at first, it is so seamlessly integrated that it will leave you wondering how the world would change if something like this came into existence.
Without spoiling too much of the story, I’ll say that it had an incredible plot for something so character-driven, and its twists and turns left me gasping aloud on multiple occasions. I was extremely impressed by Silvera’s ability to keep me so hooked from the very start on these characters and this world I had never met before—a definite recommendation for all YA readers.
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