Review of "Remember Who You Want To Be" by Micheal C. Haymes

"HIGHLY RECOMMENDED" - A highly enjoyable/satisfying reading experience. ​

This book provides the reader a fully entertaining/satisfying experience, and may appeal readers outside the genre. This indie novel met or exceeded the level of a contemporary traditionally-published books in its genre. This novel met or exceeded the editing quality of traditionally published novel. If spelling or mechanical errors were present, they were rare, hard to notice, and didn't detract from the novel's overall experience. The novel's structure (plot, characters, flow, dialogue, etc) immersed the reader and provided an effortless reading experience.  The story not only met genre expectations , but brought something original to the literary form. ​

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TITLE: Remember Who You Want To Be
PUBLISHER:  Branch Hill Press, LLC (Small Indie Publisher)
AUTHOR:   Michael C. Haymes
GENRE(S): Literary Fiction)
PUBLICATION DATE: September 23, 2022
AMAZON REVIEWS/RATINGS AT DISCOVERY: 5/5.0 Star Average
AMAZON KINDLE RANKING AT DISCOVERY: #633,493
WHY IT GOT MY ATTENTION:
I saw it on X and clicked on the author. He had it pinned to his profile. It clearly gave off the literary fiction vibe. The pitch was well-written and compelling, capturing the essence of what promised to be a well written personal drama. The sample began with an extensive forward, which I intentionally skipped. I wanted to judge this book on its true sample, not how the author wanted to frame the story. The title, the pitch and the sample effectively served up an overarching theme that I wanted more of.  
DATE PLACED ON CANDIDATE LIST: 16 June 2025
​STATUS: Reviewed 20 September 2025

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The Review

Plot.

In "Remember Who You Want to Be," the reader experiences life, and America, growing up through the lens of Roger Evans, the only child of a New England working-class family. The novel opens in 1977, with Roger's family attending a screening of Star Wars. Author Michael C. Haymes paints a picture of Roger's apparently normal childhood, one of school, little league baseball, and blue-collar American life. Over the course of the novel, Roger grows and the normalcy of his childhood is slowly stripped away as one crisis after another rocks his family and his life. Roger's father grapples with demons from his service in the Vietnam War, which threaten to tear Roger's family apart. Roger's grandfather steps in and becomes the boy's guiding force, whose influence can be felt throughout Roger's life. However, Roger's grandfather is deaf and, as Roger grows, both he and his grandfather learn sign language together. We experience Roger's caring but troubled extended family, who are plagued by their own trauma and deep secrets that eventually surface and shake Roger's life to its core. As important as his family are Roger's circle of friends, especially his best friend Jim. Jim endures a catastrophically traumatic home life, much of which he hides from the world and from Roger. The plot is, essentially, life as it happens to Roger, and how he reacts to it serves as the platform on which the author hangs the novel's themes. These themes provide the glue that makes "Remember Who You Want to Be" a richly told story. 

Characters

Roger is a complex character. His childhood is robbed by divorce and violence. He is often angry, sometimes self-centered, and teetering on falling into the personal abyss that claimed so many of those he loved. Over the years, we see him grow, simultaneously shaped by his world while fighting to carve out a place in it. In many ways, he stands in stark contrast to his best friend Jim, who succumbs to the personal darkness that torments his life. The key difference in the two friends is the influence of family, specifically the men in Roger's life—his grandfather and his father.

Roger's grandfather plays a major role early in the story, becoming a surrogate father as Roger's family falls apart. Grandson and grandfather grow close as they learn to communicate with one another with sign language. These scenes are perhaps some of the novel's best. They share a secret language, and Grandfather teaches Roger important lessons that lay the foundations of Roger's future resiliency. This resiliency carries Roger through some of his life's darkest moments.

Roger's father is largely absent or disengaged for much of his late childhood, and is slowly reintroduced in Roger's late teens. Roger's father's lessons are those of personal example, both good and bad. His father's arc is one of personal redemption. Roger slowly learns to see his father as a flawed human, but one who never gave up on himself, or (ultimately) his family.

​There are many excellent female characters in this story, like Roger's aunt Carol, who deeply loves her nephew but whose mysterious and unspoken past seems to haunt the family. My favorite female character is Roger's girlfriend Memphis. Memphis only makes a brief appearance, but the character shines with incredible depth. Haymes imbues her with a masterful combination of tenderness, vulnerability, and inner strength. While these female characters are masterfully crafted and important to the story, this is a man's book, or a book for women who genuinely wish to understand a man's heart; and this ties in with one of the novel's many themes.

Themes.

There are many themes in "Remember Who You Want to Be." There is a lot packed into this novel. The title itself, repeated several times in the story, is perhaps the novel's overarching theme. Essentially, no matter what trials and tribulations life sends your way, in the end you are responsible for the ultimate course you set. One must know where one is going, so one does not become lost along the way. This was the key difference between Roger and his best friend Jim. This directly ties into the theme of family.

A young man cannot remember who he wants to be if no one is there to help point the way. Family had a positive, if not flawed, influence in Roger's life. By contrast, Jim had no family support. To say Jim's family was highly dysfunctional would be an understatement. Jim, young, wounded, and immature, is unable to tell Roger about his horrible family's secrets until the emotional and psychological damage is already too deep. Secrets and a lack of communication are also at the heart of Roger's family's troubles. Roger's father, a stoic vet, is unable to communicate his pain and suffering with his wife. Roger's mother can't or won't hear her husband's cries for help. Grandfather and Carol hold dark secrets that fester in the family's background. Combined, all that is unspoken poisons the family. It sets up a dynamic of essentially good people being driven apart, and serves to isolate young Roger.
 
While I don't know if the author intended it, I think a major theme of "Remember Who You Want to Be" is communication. Specifically, how we fail to truly communicate with those closest to us. That is where Roger's grandfather becomes so important. One reason Roger and his grandfather are able to build such a strong relationship is they actively work at communication with one another by learning sign language. For the deaf, one cannot communicate without first actively seeing the other person. It's a very intentional process. To truly communicate with one another, we must first truly see one another. In my opinion, this is the novel's true overarching theme, whether the author intended it or not.

For example, let's talk about the novel's exploration of Deaf Culture. Through Roger, the author explores deafness—the science, the experience, its culture, and its challenges. A key lesson expressed in the story is that, when communicating with someone on the "deaf spectrum," the concepts of "Visibility, Noise, and Distance" are critical to ensure clear communication. Roger repeats this mantra to hearing people throughout the book's second half, sometimes patiently and sometimes in anger. While this is clearly important in Deaf Culture, its lessons for us "normies" are profound. "Visibility, Noise, and Distance" applies to all human relationships. First, truly see the person you care for, then eliminate those distractions (noise) that interfere with clear communication, and finally, draw close to one another (both physically and emotionally). I think this concept is what the character Memphis represents in the novel, and how, in such a brief time, she connected to Roger and began his journey of healing and reconciliation.

Speaking of women... I said earlier this is a man's book. Haymes crafts several scenes that tap into unspoken and unexplored concepts of what young men experience, think, and feel. More specifically, it explores what it is to be a young man growing up at the dawn of what could be considered "modern" American society. One such concept is how often women, no matter how much they care, are sometimes unable or unwilling to empathize with men's emotional suffering. This gap often leads young men to isolate themselves both emotionally and even physically. Eventually, these young men quit trying and begin to wall themselves off emotionally. This happened to Roger's father, and to some extent, Roger himself until he found a woman who could bridge that gap and reestablish emotional trust.

A character-driven plot, supporting deeply rewarding literary themes, makes "Remember Who You Want to Be" a  satisfying reading experience, but one not without its flaws.

Analysis.

Haymes can wrap up a chapter with the best of them. He drops some incredible lines in this novel that made me put down the book and simply ponder what I had just read. The first half of this novel is brilliant. It is some of the best writing I've encountered in years. Haymes' depiction of a family in crisis during the 1970s and 1980s, from the way the decades felt, and their influence on a family struggling to stay together, conveyed authentic genuineness. Haymes' prose is straightforward and unadorned, and he relies on rich dialogue to carry the story. The author takes us along with Roger as he matures and, despite the tragedy, fights to build a future for himself. Each chapter, though seemingly only a telling of a slice of Roger's life, reinforces one of the novel's themes. Haymes mostly captures these themes with realistic and character-driven dialogue that carries the reader effortlessly from chapter to chapter.

The novel's deeply personal tones and dialogue, concentrating on the individual struggle, get occasionally waylaid when straying into Deaf Culture identity, grievance, and advocacy. The novel's second half, while still well-written, often felt like an overt advocacy piece when it strayed from natural dialogue and character interaction to large stretches of Roger's internal monologue taking on a "public service announcement" tone. It created a jarring experience for the reader and took me momentarily out of the story. Reader education about deafness was handled best in the novel when the reader experienced it alongside Roger, such as those scenes with his grandfather. This is a minor critique, because even the "public service announcement" segments clearly conveyed important information critical to the story. At its heart, this novel advocates and educates while telling a story, and I learned much by reading it.

Recommendation

All my critiques are minor, and this novel's flaws do nothing to detract from an overall story that compels the reader to keep turning the pages. "Remember Who You Want to Be" is accessible, well-written literary fiction with heart. The reader can feel the passion the author poured into the story. I cared about Roger, his family, his friends, and what was going to happen next. The dialogue and the characters are realistic and well realized. While it provides a peek into what it was like to grow up Gen X, it doesn't use nostalgia as a crutch but as a timestamp to tell a story universal to the human condition and accessible to readers, especially young men, across multiple generations and genres.

​This is a strong first novel, and Michael C. Haymes is a promising writer with a bright future.