If you had the chance to change your fortune, despite having no knowledge of the possible consequences, would you take it? For Remy, who has always been helplessly in love with her best friend Cam, the opportunity to have her seemingly unrequited love reciprocated makes her answer an easy yes. But, what happens when the soulmate potion she trusted winds up causing the opposite of her desired effect, and Remy and Cam are torn apart in a twist of fate? Our Cursed Love by Julie Abe follows the pair as they make their way through magical Tokyo along with their friends and family, trying their best to undo their accidental curse.
Remy Kobata and Cam Yasuda are childhood best friends. The two have known each other since their mothers gave birth to them in adjacent hospital rooms, and they’ve spent their adolescence and formative teen years by each other’s side. As high school is coming to an end and the time to apply for colleges has arrived, Cam decides to apply to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for Magical Alchemy, all the way across the country from their hometown in California. Meanwhile, Remy chooses to apply to Tokyo Magical University (TMU) as an undecided major, all the way across the world. For their last shared Christmas and New Years holidays indefinitely, the two teens work tirelessly to save up money to make a trip to Tokyo together – for Remy’s applicant interview for TMU, to visit their family, and to enjoy their time together before college. For Remy, this trip is also her last opportunity to confess her feelings to Cam before he leaves for college and finds “the perfect girl” to fall in love with. As the two arrive in Japan, they meet with Remy’s sister, Ellie, and Cam’s brother, Jack, who are also a long-time couple, and their friends Naomi Watanabe, a prodigy professor and researcher at TMU, and Taka Suzuki, an English and Magical International Relations double major at TMU.
The group’s first goal is to find the Good Luck Café, a magical cafe that changes location every day, and can only be seen by magic-aware individuals. The person who ultimately finds the cafe is always rewarded with a fortune reading from the owner, Mr. Yoshino, and as Remy is the first to eventually stumble upon the cafe, she has her tea leaves interpreted by Mr. Yoshino to answer one question for her: “Who is my soulmate?” Unfortunately for her, the answer is not what she had hoped for or expected. Fast forward to a day after their visit to Good Luck Café, Remy has her TMU interview and Cam attends a lecture by Naomi, and the two end their eventful days with a stroll through Tokyo together. While walking, Remy stumbles upon yet another magical location: Beni’s Apothecary.
Selling potions, elixirs, and other beverages and snacks, the bar is operated by Mr. Yoshino’s sister, Beni. When Remy questions the accuracy of her fortune reading, Beni gifts her a century-old soulmate potion that is meant to make the two recipients become soulmates. Testing the potion out, Remi and Cam drink the potion together and expect to become soulmates immediately afterwards. Instead, as Cam’s eyes come back into focus after taking his share of the potion, he turns to look at Remy and utters a phrase she never expected: “Who are you?” This sets off a series of events throughout the course of five days, as Naomi, Taka, Jack, Ellie, and Remy work hard to restore Cam’s memories of Remy before it’s too late. Naomi creates an antidote that requires memories from Cam and Remy, prompting the duo to set off on their adventure through Tokyo to create new memories to awaken the lost ones.
With a unique plot, numerous references to Japanese and pop culture, and a sprinkle of magic woven into the story, Our Cursed Love is one of those books you can’t put down once you’ve picked it up and immersed yourself into it. Despite the book having a bit of a slow start as Cam and Remy first arrive in Tokyo, the story picks up as soon as the pair meet with their siblings. Abe paints each scene of the story with plenty of details – almost too many at times – and effectively builds her characters. Even without knowing anything about them beforehand, readers are able to become familiar with Cam and Remy through their mannerisms, the point of view switches that share each of their thoughts and perspectives, and their dialogue. Additionally, for a young adult reader, the two characters are simply easy to relate to. Both are infatuated with the idea of Tokyo, wanting to visit and explore the city and what it has to offer. Abe also throws in both real and fictional pop cultural references to play on Easter eggs. While Remy fangirls over popular K-pop group BTS, who exist in real life, Cam loves ChemiCold, a three-member band that hosts pop-up shows every New Year’s Eve.
Despite their magical backgrounds, both characters are Asian American and come from humble families. Their first generation Japanese immigrant parents worked tirelessly to build a life and provide for their families in the US, hoping it would bring them better opportunities. For Cam, his father has always had unrealistic expectations of Cam, especially since Jack excelled academically. Cam’s dreams of going to MIT are rooted in living out his father’s dreams for him. He is set to inherit the family’s magical stationery store, CharmWorks, where the notebooks and journals are charmed with confidence and mental fortitude spells. Although he personally has no interest in inheriting the store, Cam feels obligated to because his father is, well, his father. Remy’s family owns a magical tea shop next door to CharmWorks, where drinks are charmed with joy, and the duo spend plenty of time there hanging out and drinking their favorite Matcha Lattes and Hojicha Lattes. Small details of their interests and lives in their small and tight-knit Asian American communities like such make the characters all the more relatable, leading readers to root for them through their hardships even more.
The main highlight of this novel is still without a doubt the message it portrays. “Ichigo, ichie,” meaning “every moment is one chance in a lifetime,” is a phrase often repeated throughout the story, and is one that Remy and Cam learn to live by through their difficult journey. Like a domino effect, everything that happened could have been prevented if Remy and Cam hadn’t let their “once in a lifetime” moments continuously pass by due to their fear of rejection. Although they had feelings for one another, neither ever acted on them because they kept waiting for “the next time.” Through this curse, Remy, Cam, and even Ellie, Jack, and Taka, realized how much they should be cherishing each given moment, and were reminded not to take things for granted and breeze through life with too many worries of the future or past. At the novel’s start, Cam and Remy believed everything was beautiful because of the magic that floated in the air, but by the end, they realized that life itself and creating memories with loved ones are what’s most trustworthy and magical of all.
