Memoirs Of A Teenage Amnesiac Review

       "Above all, mine is a love story.
       "And, like most love stories, it involves chance, gravity, and a dash of head trauma.
       "It begins with a coin toss.”

       After falling down a flight of stairs, high school junior Naomi Porter loses all of her memories after seventh grade. She can’t remember her parents’ divorce. She can’t remember her boyfriend Ace. She can’t remember why her best friend Will calls her Chief. She can’t even remember why she likes Will, how they met, or why they've put so much effort and care into becoming editors of the school yearbook. She can’t remember James, the boy who rescued her from her dive down the stairs and stayed with her all the way to the hospital. But, that’s not actually out of the ordinary, since they've never met.

       This is very much a book in three parts. Those parts are titled, “I was”, “I am”, and “I will”, as Naomi figures out who she was with her memories, who she is now without them, and who she will be once she’s resolved those two realities.  This is a story about love, trust, self-searching, angst, broken people, and the perfect school yearbook. It is a story about the leap we all have to make, from seventh grade to adulthood. It is a story about the people we meet along the way, the ways we love them, and the ways we move on when we inevitably change.

Plot: Original but comforting, beautifully paced

Characters: Loveable and well developed. Realistically flawed, in that way that hurts a little bit.

Writing: Good. Clear and thoughtful, like Naomi.

Ending: Perfect beyond words :)

Content: Teenaged drinking, mentions of sex and stuff related to sex, but nothing explicit.

Overall: I wanna curl up on the sofa and snuggle with this book. I love it so much.

       One last thing. One my favorite aspects of this book is the way the love interests change. It’s not a love triangle! Instead, it shows a very realistic evolution of several kinds of relationships. Rather than being forced to choose between two guys with contrasting merits, Naomi is presented with a different choice as each boy-man-creature enters the scope of her life. Much truer to the real world, where, let’s face it, most of us will never be pursued by even one man with that particular combination of smolder-y eyes, a dark past, and the torso of a Greek god, but all of us are going to have to live with our exes, and occasionally deal with the very real fallout of being close to damaged people. Gabrielle Zevin's writing and storytelling is thoughtful and profound, and I'm going to look for more of her books as soon as I get through the mountain of novels I already have.

~Cheers, and happy summer!