Forever by Judy Blume

I won an ebook of Forever by Judy Blume in a competition that Lis held  I've read it oooooh lots of times and it used to be one of my absolutely favourite books.  I've not read it in many years but tonight I sat down with the ebook and read it through.  It was really nice to revisit it and a definite blast from the past.



Forever is a young adult book and it's a tale of first love and everything that comes with it.  Getting to know each other, falling in love, sex, heartache, break ups.   I suppose you could call it a coming of age book.

When I read it before I always thought that Katherine and Michael were the perfect teenage couple and that he was this really great guy.  Of course, I was a teenager myself at that time.  Reading it tonight I couldn't see that so much.  Good characters yet but the idea that they are "Forever" which they spend most of the book thinking they are... I knew from reading the book before they aren't, but the clues they aren't are there and I just never saw it before.  Perspective, again.  

One thing that I have always thought about this book however and more so tonight is how daring Judy Blume was to write it.  It was originally written in the 1970's and as a book for teenagers it's not exactly explicit (although I kinda thought that when I read it as a naive teenager) but it does have more detail then some parents would prefer their kids to have access too.  I was reading a blog the other day where they said they read young adult fiction because they read it with their children and discuss it with them.  This is a book that you could enjoy but you would probably cringe whilst discussing it with your parents.

I'm glad to have had the opportunity to re-read this, it was nice to revisit an old favourite and see how I still love it despite thinking differently about it.