While I liked it less than The Forgetting, and thus wanted to rate it two stars, I bumped it up to three because of the great culty-vibe of New Canaan and the realistic way that Samara's horrors of never-ending memory were portrayed.

If I thought the romance in The Forgetting was unnecessary, the romance here was even worse. I understand Beckett didn't like Jill like that, and that Samara was the only other girl he'd ever seen, but their love was so instant and fierce that it was unbelievable. WHY do YA books have to have love interests in every plot, no matter how necessary it is?? If this was just about Samara and Beckett, friends, trying to figure things out together, that wouldn't have changed their dynamic at all and would have gotten rid of that useless dreary "oh does he/she really love me" stuff. And maybe Beckett wouldn't have forgiven her so easily after he and Jill found out that she was initially planning to turn them in.

I did, however, like the concept that the Knowing could only love once, because they would remember so vividly everything having to do with that love, and it played out so well with Sam's parents and Reddix's complex motivations, but so why did we need it hammered in with Sam and Beckett?

And what happened to Gray and Nadia? Genivee was Sam's great-grandmother, Liliya was Nita's, but Nadia just... never came back from exploring? Joined the new colony they found? ( )

It took me a loooong time to get into this sequel to The Forgetting, to the point where I felt pretty apathetic about the storyline and characters by the time I was able to make sense of what was going on. There were a few interesting twists and memorable moments, but the first book, which was very good in comparison, might best have remained a standalone work. ( )

Samara lives in a separate community from the one from "The Forgetting". Her group believes they escaped from Earth for a reason and are obligated to create the utopia that some of the original colonists envisioned. But she discovers, when faced with actual Earth people, that what she thought was true is more complicated. ( )

This was a pretty good sequel, although I liked the first book better. There was a big time gap between the two, so you don't see characters from the first book, which was kind of a bummer. I did like Sam and Beck, they were cute together. The Knowing sounds way worse than the Forgetting. I definitely wouldn't want to remember every detail of my life. I thought the beginning was a little slow, but once the characters came together and we started to get answers, I liked it more. The technology earth has was fun to read about, I wish we had it here. I really liked Nita's family, especially her grandpa. They were good people. Overall, not too bad of a sequel. ( )

If you enjoyed the first one (and I did), you are most likely going to enjoy this one as well. More development of the world, both Earth and Canaan, and sympathetic new characters to enjoy. Pretty typical YA fantasy romance, but it's popular for a reason, and this was a lot of fun. ( )