Christina Reviews *Remember Me* by Christopher Pike

For those who didn't grow up with Christopher Pike, he was kinda like R.L. Stine, only for more advanced readers.  He was my generation's Stephenie Meyer, only his plots were a heck of a lot more convoluted.  His The Last Vampire series was ten times better than Twilight.  But I'm not going to review The Last Vampire.  I'm going to review the second book of his I ever read.  To this day, I think it may be one of his best.

           Remember Me


          "It is a wonderful thing to be alive.
           I hadn't planned on dying.
          But that is the story I have to tell:  how it happened, why it happened, why it shouldn't have happened, and why it was meant to be.  I won't start at the beginning, however.  That would take too long, even for someone like me who isn't getting any older.  I'll start near the end, the night of the party.  The night I died.  I'll start with a dream."
                                               Remember Me, P. 2

          Remember Me is about an 18 year old girl who is killed at a friend's birthday party shortly before her high school graduation.  There are those who think it's suicide, but Shari knows better.  Shari is the dead girl who also happens to be the protagonist in the book.  She narrates the story from beyond the grave as she conducts her own amateurish investigation in order to find her killer and clear her name once and for all.

        This was one of the first Christopher Pike books I ever read, and I remember it as being one of his best.

          The characters are two-dimensional at times, but I think it works.  Shari's view of the world was always somewhat black and white, and, in some ways, it remains that way even after death. I suppose that is the way things are to many teenagers. This book won't enlighten anyone about the complexities of human nature (except in a somewhat cursory way) but it is still quite an interesting read for young teens who are looking for a simple, yet unique, murder mystery that is also quirky and intelligent (well, intelligent compared to many other books of its kind). The concept was somewhat different. I don't really know how original an idea it was at the time but it certainly felt refreshing to a 13 year old me.  I hadn't seen the movie Ghost yet. 
          And then there were the characters. Shari was full of personality, and I liked her. Some of the things she said were funny. She admits that she can be a bit phony, and this makes her seem real in a world that often doesn't feel that way. Maybe this is why I didn't mind the two-dimensional characters so much. Sometimes I felt like Shari was mocking the ways in which we can sometimes focus on the things that seem important at the time but really aren't. Anyway, the characters were never boring. They were certainly memorable, in my opinion.

        The book also makes its own statement on the after-life and while it may or may not conflict with the reader's own religious views, I have to admit that it's an intriguing look at one of life's greatest mysteries---where we go when we die.
 
         Anyway, Remember Me does deal with some mature themes and, for that reason, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone younger than 13.

         It's a great book to start with if you're looking to venture into the world of Christopher Pike. But you don't really have to bother with the rest of the series unless you're interested in the spiritual questions the first one raises and want to read more on that. The other two stories have weaker storylines. They seem far more interested in the more complex questions of life and death and, I must admit, much of it went over my head.