Aya M. Productions

From What I Remember... by Stacy Kramer & Valerie Thomas is a story focusing on Kylie and Max getting stuck in Mexico the day before their high school graduation. Interestingly, the story is told in 5 POVs: Kylie’s; Max’s; Will’s, Kylie’s best friend; Lily’s, Max’s girlfriend; and Jake’s, Kylie’s younger brother. Typically multiple POVs don’t work, but it worked well here. Each character added something to the story and had his/her own distinct personality.

What I love most about this story was the self discovery all the characters went through. There was lots of romance and some random fun thrown in along with some very terrible ideas, but it all led to the characters discovering something about themselves and how they want to live their lives. It’s something I’m still doing myself, I’m sure. Each character feels this need to act a certain way to keep up a certain appearance, but perhaps that appearance really isn’t what they want to be seen as or they discover that they can still be seen a certain way but still act more like themselves.

One peeve I had was how Max treated the situation once Lily came to Mexico. I understand that it’s quite the delicate situation. Especially since Max technically cheated. I mean he fell for someone else for goodness sakes. However, I think there should have been a way of going about it without getting so many people upset with you. I sympathized with both Kylie and Lily. Unfortunately, as much as I sympathized with her, I still could not like Lily. She was still pretty shallow, in my opinion, even at the end of the story. Plus I totally saw her as someone Max was expected to be with opposed to who Max should be with, which is also why I wasn’t so upset with the cheating.

Overall, I’d give this 4.5 stars. It was a fun read with an interesting storyline about self discovery. I’d definitely recommend reading this book to anyone that loves to read YA.