Book Review - Don't You Forget About Me by Jancee Dunn

After reading a brief recommendation in People Magazine, I set off in search of Don't You Forget About Me. My local Borders did not have the book in stock, but two other stores within equal driving distance from my home did. Since I had never checked out the Arbor Place Mall in Douglasville, I used this opportunity to do so.

I was surprised to finally locate the book in the Literary Fiction section of the store. I can't recall ever knowingly purchasing a novel from this genre before. With mission accomplished, I headed home to begin the trip down memory lane. And I managed to finish the book within a week, even with the Gather Summerpics photo promotion in full swing.

At thirty-eight, Lillian Curtis is content with her life. She enjoys her routine as a producer for a talk show in New York City. Her relationship with her husband is pleasant even if no longer exciting. Most nights she is more than happy to come home to her apartment and crawl into her pajamas. Then she's hit with a piece of shocking news. Her husband wants a divorce.

Blindsided, she takes a leave of absence from work and moves back to her parents home in suburban New Jersey. Nestled in her childhood bedroom, where Duran Duran and Squeeze posters still cover the walls, she finds high school memories from the 80s a healing salve to her troubles. Punctuating her stroll down memory lane is an invitation to her high school twenty-year reunion where she hopes to reconnect with the old love of her life, Christian Somers. 

Lillian eventually discovers the pitfalls of glorifying the old days, the mortification of failing as an adult, and the impossibility of fully recapturing the past. Don't You Forget About Me is for anyone who looks back and wonders, what if. It's also for anyone who thinks the best years have already passed them by.

This novel was filled with some really likeable characters and personality types. Lillian's boss, Vi, being one of the most uniquely adoring of the bunch. It was a great read and set off a personal trip down memory lane for myself as well. I graduated from high school just two years before the main character and could easily identify with the time period, nostalgia and circumstance.

I really liked this novel and highly recommend it to anyone who survived high school during the 80s. It was an enjoyable, funny and definitely thought provoking read.

Has anyone else read this one yet?