I was tagged by the lovely Cátia from over @The Girl Who Read Too Much to do the Nostalgic Book Review Tag. I can already tell you, this is going to be really interesting for me, because while I think I do somewhat remember the overall plot of books that I liked, I often have no idea about the specifics. But take a look at the rules yourself:

The Nostalgic Book Review is a tag where you review a book you read at least three years ago entirely from memory. The review will be broken down into a summary where you summarise the book from memory, your thoughts on the book and an epilogue where you look up the book’s summary and compare them to what you remembered.

Rules:

• Please link back to Read Think Ponder’s post, so that the original rules are always accessible to anyone who is curious and wants to participate!
• Remember: do not look up your book when writing it’s summary and thoughts.
• Acknowledge the person who tagged you in your post.
• Tag your friends and fellow bloggers – it’s up to you how many!

I chose to go with Avalon High by Meg Cabot because it was one of the first books that got me into reading in English. It’s definitely been more than 3 years since I’ve read it, probably more something along the lines of 8 or 10 years. I saw the movie adaptation somewhere inbetween that, but I hated the film. As I said, this is going to be interesting.

Summary

Avalon High is a modern day re-telling of the Arthurian legend. Every character in the book is the reincarnation of Arthur, Lancelot, Guinevere and so on. Supposedly this happens every couple of years, because “Arthur” needs to be around to save the world or because something important is going to happen. This time around, they are all teens that go to High School together and their History teacher is their mentor. He’s part of some sort of secret society that monitors the reincarnates.
The main character, Ellie, is new in town and doesn’t know about anything that’s going on yet. Her parents are History professors at university with specializing in Arthurian history. They even named Ellie after one of the characters, which is why everyone believes she is supposedly the reincarnation of Lancelot’s lover. Yet everything gets turned upside down when Will, the guy who is supposed to be Arthur is actually crushing on Ellie more than he is on Jennifer (=Guinevere).
But the gang has bigger problems than just awkward love triangles, because evil is lurking just around the corner and Will has to get his act together in order to fulfill his destiny.

Thoughts

I remember loving this book! I am a huge fan of the Arthurian legend and the cover was all shiny and bad-ass – there was no way I couldn’t love it.
But really, the book was a lot of fun. It had romance, it had a cool legend and it had tons and tons of angsty teen romance. Also, if I remember correctly there was a great twist at the end of the story. I think it could’ve been foreseen a little bit, but it was written in a way it still made sense and was generally great. In fact, there was another thing that made the book really cool. The cover illustrations of the characters. I wanted this to be an animated TV show so bad!
I know that I enjoyed reading it so much that I looked for similar books all over. I hadn’t yet read a lot of books in the English language, even though I always loved it. I thought a whole book would be too much of a commitment. Well, afterwards I did not think that anymore. But please, bear in mind that I was like 12 or 14 at the time I read this.

Epilogue

Goodreads summary:

Avalon High, Ellie’s new school, is pretty much what she’d expected. There’s Lance, the hunky footballer. Jennifer, the cute cheerleader. Marco, the troublemaker. And then there’s Will – the most gorgeous guy Ellie’s ever met. She can hardly believe he likes HER.
When Will says he thinks he’s met Ellie before, things start getting a little weird. A feeling that grows as Ellie discovers the strange bonds that entwine Will, Lance, Jen, Marco – and herself.
As darkness turns to danger, can Ellie stop the horrific chain of events that is about to engulf them all . . .

Okay, so I obviously didn’t remember all the characters in full detail. It’s been years guys, that only makes sense! Otherwise I think I told you more than what’s written here. I was wrong about them knowing that they’re supposed to be reincarnations though. All in all, I remembered far more than I thought I would. Maybe it has something to do with Once Upon a Time including Arthur now and me being all mad because he’s probably evil.

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Therefore, I tag thee:

• Olivia @Bibliomad
• Kit Cat @Kit’s Books
• Amber @Only True Magic
• Maria @Marwhal Reads

I hope none of you did this already, but if so and I didn’t see it, I’m sorry! Otherwise I  just want to say the same as always, please don’t feel obliged to do the tag if you don’t want to. Also if you, yes YOU, want to do it, don’t be shy and just tell me! You can consider yourself tagged!