Remind Me to Hate You Later

December 1, 2022
The fallout and sustained ripple effects of a young woman's death by suicide are explored in this realistic novel. Jules has long struggled with her social media-obsessed mother Britt's posts about parenting and family life. They often share a great deal more about Jules' life than is comfortable for her and also push an image and weight consciousness that damage her well-being. Her best friend, Natalie, and boyfriend, Carter, try to help her negotiate the difficult position she is in with her mom and to support her as she also experiences depression and suicidal ideation and copes by cutting herself. Shifting from the first section, in which Jules' first-person voice is centered, to the second, in which Nat is the narrator, this poignant, honest story is complexly layered, pulling in Jules' loved ones' various perspectives in unfussy, descriptive language. The backstory of Nat's family, who still grieve the death of her mother years earlier, evocatively illustrates the different ways grief can manifest and how it can defy expectations of being a linear process. The auspicious ending is welcome, though Nat's growing understanding of Britt may strike readers as coming about a bit too quickly. Main characters are cued White. A worthwhile, authentic meditation on loss, difficult family dynamics, and emotional growth. (Fiction. 13-18)

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January 9, 2023
A thoughtful meditation on social media and its effects on mental health, this moving novel by Mason (Between the Bliss and Me) follows the aftermath of a teenager’s death by suicide. Though her mother regularly documents 16-year-old Jules’s life to the five million subscribers of her parenting blog, Jules believes that her mom hates her: “She’s hated me since the day I was born with a hole in my heart. I was imperfect from the very beginning.” Though Jules is optimistic about a future with her caring boyfriend Carter and dreams of attending Le Cordon Bleu to become a chef, her self-harm, which she uses to cope, worsens. When Jules dies by suicide, the first-person perspective shifts to her best friend, Nat, who struggles to cope with Jules’s death and becomes singularly focused on showing Jules’s mother how her social media obsession affected her daughter’s self-worth. Through varying voices—Nat’s narrative reads as distant compared to Jules’s inherent expressiveness—Mason presents an intricate look at the grieving process’s myriad forms in this harrowing novel, which addresses themes of blame, regret, resentment, and shame, and how these difficult feelings can affect families and friendships. A beginning note contextualizes the issues addressed. Ages 14–up.

November 3, 2023

Gr 9 Up- A mother's outsized ego as a social media influencer is misunderstood in her daughter's suicide. Jules loves to cook, and to eat-passions her best friend Natalie and boyfriend Carter benefit from over many bowls of spaghetti carbonara. Often reluctant to engage with her high school peers, Jules lives with depression and feels safest in the kitchen. She's considered suicide and makes Nat promise not to tell, putting Nat in an impossible position. Nat shares this secret with Jules's mother, Britt, who became a surrogate Mom to Nat when her own mother died of cancer. Britt's fame as an Instagram influencer clouds her decisions as a parent. After Britt posts a childhood photo of Jules in a too-tight bathing suit, her followers' comments shame Jules, relentlessly and forever. Britt sees writing a book about Jules's tragic death as healing, and maybe helping-but first she needs Nat's approval. Even though Nat tries hard to blame Britt for Jules's death, she agrees to read it prepublication, and is moved by Britt's personal revelations of loss, before she became a mother. Mason shows how Carter and Nat tentatively seek out each other's solace as well, experiencing guilt, grief, and finally, some acceptance of Jules's responsibility for her own life, especially the decision she made to end it. VERDICT Recommended for YA collections.-Georgia Christgau

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