This review was first posted on http://www.rubysreads.com 
 Forgotten is one of those novels that takes a concept and twists it this way and that so you end up spending the entire book wondering "Wait...how does that work, exactly?" In the case of Forgotten, we're presented with a character that remembers forward instead of backward. What this means for the narrator of Forgotten is that, while she doesn't recall what she wore to school yesterday, she can tell you what she'll wear tomorrow. London can only keep track of her life by writing notes to tell herself what she needs to know when she wakes up in the morning. It's a very bizarre concept and, more than once, it caused complex knots in my thinking processes, and my understanding (based on personal experience) of how memory works. 
 Patrick deals with some of my most pressing questions. For one thing, I didn't really buy that London would be able to have a close relationship with someone who didn't know about her condition. No amount of notes would be able to tell her everything she'd need to know in order to avoid detection. There would be constant small slip ups that would give her away. As regards London's romantic relationship...I did question whether it could ever go anywhere if London feels like she just met him for the first time every day. This is answered in two ways. One is spoilery and I won't tell it to you. But the other I kind of like. London supposes that, while her head doesn't remember Luke, her heart does. I'm a Romantic enough to buy that. 
 The romance between London and Luke is sweet and sexy in a first love kind of way, but it isn't the only thing Forgotten has going for it. One of the main disadvantages of having no memory (of the past, anyway) is how vulnerable it makes you. As London says, "for [her], reading is remembering." This means that, because her memory is external, it can easily be trifled with. There's also no way for London to know what things are important for her remember...this makes it possible for people to tamper with her "memory." What Cat Patrick is trying do--and very successfully, I think--is address that age-old question: Is ignorance bliss? Because London uses notes to "remember" her life, she can easily choose the things she wants to forget. Worse, others can choose them for her. 
 I enjoyed this novel, even if I couldn't quite grasp the logic of it. I don't know if it's even possible to do so--I'm probably so entrenched in the concept of linear time that my tiny little brain goes into panic mode at the very suggestion of remembering things that haven't happened yet. I will say that I didn't care much for the mystery regarding the funeral that London keeps "remembering". Not so much the lead up to it, but the too-tidy resolution. There's no denying that Forgotten was a fabulous debut novel. I'm looking forward to seeing what Cat Patrick comes up with next.