When seventeen-year-old Sia wakes up on a park bench, she has no idea who or where she is. Yet after a week of being homeless, she’s reunited with her family. At school, she’s powerful and popular. At home, she’s wealthy beyond her dreams. But she quickly realizes her perfect life is a lie. Her family is falling apart and her friends are snobby, cruel and plastic. Worse yet, she discovers she was the cruelest one. Mortified by her past, she embarks on a journey of redemption and falls for Kyle, the “geek” she once tormented. Yet all the time she wonders if, when her memories return, she’ll become the bully she was before…and if she’ll lose Kyle.
Sia had so much potential, and the start of the book was so strong for me, that it feels almost sad that I'm writing a pretty average review for this book. It started so well, I almost had chills for the first few chapters, wherein our gorgeous protagonist wakes up on the streets with no memory. Scared and alone, the first person she is approached by is a total creeper and Sia has no idea what to do. She's taken under a homeless woman called Carol's wing, and together they look after each other.
That doesn't last for long though, because just a few chapters in gets home, and this is where the story goes downhill. Sia's life isn't perfect, she lives in a big house with parent's who's company is going down the drain, an alcoholic mother and it turns out she was a total biatch back before she lost her memories. Sia tries to take back her previous life but is restless and uncomfortable, suddenly becoming all righteous and nice.
It's all very inspiring and happy and smiley, but it also reads like a made for Disney movie. It's all content with very little substance and I felt somewhat detached. It just seemed somewhat rushed in a way, like after one conversation with Sia her mother (who has had a bad alcohol habit for years) agrees to go to rehab, then she's better very quickly and none of this felt authentic. Sia's old boyfriend and old friends are pretty annoying and one dimensional - they are just the typical high school bully crowd - and they could have been developed a lot more. The only character I did really like was Kyle who is, thankfully, the main love interest. I didn't like how quickly the romance developed and how obsessed they are by the end of the book, but Kyle was a cool dude. He can stay.
Grayson's writing was simplistic, it read easily but didn't keep me on the edge of my seat. I finished the book in a couple of days and will probably forget about it pretty soon. It isn't, unfortunately, a book that will stay with me for a long time.
It was a nice read to kill time though.
Book released November 20th 2014
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