Remind Me to Hate You Later

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.