“Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac” by Gabrielle Zevin

After reading and loving Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Sam and I both were interested in reading more Zevin. Sam went with AJ Fikry (which I then read later), but the title of this amnesiac book was the one that most piqued my interest. I knew ahead of time that it was YA, which isn't always my favorite genre (at least not since I was a YA myself), but I wanted to give it a try anyway. 

Well, here were my thoughts as of page 20: This book is silly. 

And yet within three days I’d already finished reading it, so it couldn't have been all that bad. It never did really grab me, but it was enjoyable enough. 

This story follows a teenage girl, Naomi Porter, as she tries to regain her memories after falling down the steps outside her high school and getting a nasty knock on the head. She's seventeen years old, but she has lost all her memories since the time she was in middle school. She's forgotten her parents' divorce, and she doesn't even recognize her own boyfriend. 

The first half of the book seemed a bit contrived, with the amnesia just a plot point that allows Naomi to learn about her life along with the reader. The second half of the book was somewhere between surprising and annoying as Naomi realizes how much the fall has changed her. I'm obviously no expert, but I find it difficult to believe that a few forgotten memories would so completely change who you are on the inside. Would you really make such completely different decisions the second time around just because you forgot what you'd chosen the first time around? To me, the mystique of amnesia lies with the potential when uncovering what's hidden. In this book, nothing is really hidden--there are no real surprises or twists--it just takes some time for Naomi to put all the pieces back together. 

Ultimately, I was a bit disappointed in this book but that was most likely due to unrealistic expectations.