"From What I Remember" by Stacy Kramer and Valerie Thomas

From What I Remember by Stacy Kramer and Valerie Thomas was interesting, but took a real stretch of the imagination to enjoy.  It all starts with one last assignment before graduation.  Kylie Flores is partnered up with  Max Langston.  Of course this is a match not made in heaven and drama ensues.  When they finally sit down at a local Starbucks to do the assignment Kylie's backpack is stolen and the two take off after the culprit in an attempt to rescue the laptop that contains everything from her valedictorian speech to her first screenplay.  This was the first time I had issues believing the story.  Maybe it's just me, but it seems that the logical thing to do would be to call 911, not to end up trapped in the back of a  U-haul on it's way to Mexico.  Of course Kylie and Max get out of trouble but are unable to get back into the U.S. since they don't have their passports.  So instead of calling their parents or trying to involve the authorities, they get drunk in Ensenada while they wait for Kylie's best friend Will to fetch their passports and bring them. 

Had this book been set in the 90s, I think I would have bought it a little better.  But it was set in present day and it was very clear that Kylie and Max had cell phones and could have called for help.  Now, Kylie's phone does die early on, but not Max's.  I was so frustrated by this.  I was also irritated when Kylie bought a phone card and called her mom.  I couldn't figure out how her mom accepted the fact that her daughter was calling from a Mexico number (I'm assuming that caller ID is still a thing in this universe).  There were just a lot of loopholes that made this book not believable to me

It's kinda sad because I wanted to enjoy this book.  I heard great things about it prior to reading it.  It had a lot of elements that were unique and though it wasn't a new story (think The Hangover but on a much smaller and younger scale), there were parts of it that I found really interesting.  I especially enjoyed that each chapter began with a quote from a different movie.  I also liked that though Kylie and Max are the main characters, some chapters are told from the viewpoints of the the minor characters.  Though their portions of the story weren't always that important, it did give the novel some nice flavor.

Overall I want to recommend this book.  If you can read it without thinking about how beneficial technology would be in this situation then it's a pretty decent read.  It's certainly not a deep book, but I would consider it good beach vacation read.

Happy Reading!
-Melly