Book 4- Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin

2038-01-19T03:14:07Z

Summary
Seventeen-year-old Naomi Porter slips outside her school, lands on her head, and forgets the last four years of her life. She forgets her best friend and her boyfriend. She forgets her parents' divorce and their new relationships. She forgets French (but remembers math). Essentially, she forgets the young woman that she has become and has to reinvent herself. That's not an easy thing to do when you've got all these people expecting you to behave a certain way, and you don't know if those ways feel right. Only one person has no expectations of Naomi's behavior and that's James Larkin, a classmate and an outsider that Naomi didn't really know before her accident. But, while he doesn't think that she will act a certain way, he does want her to fix the problems and secrets he has in his own life. Meanwhile, Will, Naomi's best friend and co-editor of the yearbook, wants Naomi to get back to normal, come back to yearbook, and remember a very important secret he told her right before she hit her head. It's pretty tough having amnesia.

Opinion
The books starts off with Naomi declaring to the reader that it's a love story. That is what we're supposed to take away from it. Certainly there are lots of relationships (romantic and filial) in it: Naomi and her boyfriend, Naomi and Will, Naomi and James, Naomi's father and his fiancee, Naomi and her father, Naomi and her father's fiancee, Naomi and her mother. But I'm used to romance novels, and when I read the love story declaration, my mind immediately referenced romance novels. This book is not a romance novel. The boy that Naomi is with for the majority of the novel--I guess I understand why they like each other, but she seems to fall intensely in love with him very quickly. A little unrealistic, I thought. I can't say too much without spoiling anything. I don't know, I was just unsatisfied with the whole relationship.

Also, Naomi's kind of a bitch. I didn't like her at all. She starts off calling her mother a slut. She doesn't treat Will all that great. She's not very nice to people unless she feels like being nice to them. I'm just a really big believer in being nice, even when you don't want to be. So that kind of put me off a little bit and made me enjoy the novel a lot less.

Really, I'm very particular about my love stories, and this one did not live up to my expectations. The way Zevin deals with amnesia and identity and reinvention is pretty interesting, but I just couldn't care that much about the main character.

All in all, I give the book 6 out of 10 for personal enjoyment, 7.5 out of 10 for actual quality.

Coming soon: The Morning Gift and A Song for Summer

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Book 4- Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin