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Remy has been best friends with Cam since the moment they were born, practically. She’s been in love with him for a while, too. Now, as they are about to graduate high school, she wants to tell him how she feels. After all, they may be separated by thousands of miles: Cam plans to attend MIT and Remy hopes to go to Tokyo Magical University.
Both have saved up the money they needed to make a trip together to Tokyo, and this delightful time of year — Christmas and New Year’s — would be a special backdrop to opening up to true feelings.
Just as she is working up the nerve to share her heart, Remy, Cam and his brother and her sister (who live in Tokyo) find a magical tea shop that appears in different places on different days. She gets her fortune told from the legendary owner, and while she hoped to hear that Cam is her soulmate, she is crushed by the answer.
When they find another magical spot that appears in different places, this time an apothecary, Remy and Cam take a chance on an ancient elixir. Remy hopes it can fix the disastrous situation of her fortune. But then after they drink the potion, Cam forgets who Remy is and how she fits into his life.
Now it’s fully a disaster. With some help from talented magical friends, they try some ways to reverse the results of the potion. That means collecting important memories and mixing them with another potion. But if it fails, both of them will forget each other. And they only have six days to make it happen.
Our Cursed Love is a sweet story and has some strong points going for it: a magical world hiding in the regular one that only some people know about, two (young) best friends who have a lifetime of tender memories together, and plenty of travel around Tokyo (both real and magical). The setting is the strength of the book, with its descriptions of places and foods. I did like the characters, but I didn’t get completely swept up in the story.
My main complaint is that Remy and Cam (the story shares both their points of view) talk a lot about how much they have shared and how great a friendship they have, how much each loves the other (without the other knowing… ok, it’s a bit of a spoiler, but really, you know how this is going to go), but it’s more “talk” than “show.” I feel like the author was told by an editor to include more examples of what they did together over the years and complied, but it didn’t really settle down into the core of the story. (I do think the author’s next book will likely be better.)
Would be a good pick for readers who love Japan and clean young adult romance.
Rated: Mild. Profanity includes about 75 uses of mild language, and 5 instances of the name of Deity in vain. Some kissing but nothing more.
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*I received an ARC in exchange for my honest review.
