When Naomi falls down the school stairs and bangs her head, she loses all memories of the last 4 years. She doesn't remember her friends, or that her parents have divorced. She doesn't know why her best friend calls her "Chief" of why she used to love working on yearbook. She breaks up with her boyfriend, and starts dating someone with a history of issues. Then her memory comes back. ( )

A fun book. Generally more for teens, and more directed towards girls. The book is fun, and the ending is a nice change to the disney's standard of Happy Ever After. ( )

Reviewed by Me for TeensReadToo.com

When sixteen-year-old Naomi Porter takes a header down the front steps of Thomas Purdue Country Day School, she loses a lot more than her pride. Although she remembers the ride in the ambulance to the hospital with James Larkin, and recalls that her blood ended up on his shirt, and even remembers that he assured the ambulance driver that he was her boyfriend, she's having a really hard time remembering anything prior to that. Anything, say, that happened in the last four years.

Awake and alert in the hospital with her dad by her side, Naomi knows that something's wrong. She knows her name, and she knows where she is. What she doesn't quite understand is that the last tangible memory she has happened when she was twelve. She can tell by the way her body feels that she's not twelve any longer. And then comes the first of many shockers: her parents are divorced. Oh, and her mother is remarried to her high school sweetheart, and they have a toddler named Chloe, who happens to be her half-sister. And she has a boyfriend named Ace, who conveniently enough is away at tennis camp. And her best friend, William "Coach" Landsman, is also the co-editor of the school paper, The Phoenix, a position she shares. And on and on the list goes, until all Naomi wants to do is scream.

In the course of a few minutes and one bump on the head, Naomi has lost four years worth of memories. She still knows she's adopted, she recalls her life up until the age of twelve, but everything between seventh grade and her current position as a junior in high school is a blank slate. For some, she's a girl to be pitied. For others, she's just another teen looking for attention. For herself, and her father, and her best friend, and her boyfriend, and the boy she begins to fall in love with, she's something else entirely -- an enigma, a girl without a past who must forge ahead to make her own future.

I truly enjoyed MEMOIRS OF A TEENAGE AMNESIAC. The tone of the story is a perfectly balanced mix of humor, seriousness, and the search for identity. There are moments that are sad, and even downright heartbreaking, mixed with scenes of hilarity. Ms. Zevin, the author of one of my favorite books ever, ELSEWHERE, has penned another story that will leave you wondering and thinking long after you turn the final page. ( )

With the flip of a coin, Naomi Porter’s life gets literally turned upside down. She goes back to school to get the yearbook camera and hits her head on the steps causing a memory loss of the last four years. She doesn’t remember her parent’s divorce or that she now has a little sister. She doesn’t remember her tennis star boyfriend or Will, her kind of nerdy bestfriend with an obsession for making mixed-CDs and the yearbook. She does latch onto the boy in the ambulance with her, the moody, depressed, once suicidal James. Naomi decides that she doesn’t like the person she is finding out about and sets out to reinvent herself. She changes just about everything she can. While doing this, she pushes Will away and damages their friendship. Meanwhile, Naomi and James form a relationship built on both of them not having a past. Naomi because she can’t remember hers and James because he refuses to talk about his. I read this book for a college course and I enjoyed it, but felt that some of the problems presented were just solved by the end and you don't really know how.

In Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac, Naomi Porter is an average teenage girl at an average high school, with an average boyfriend. Until she forgets all of it. After falling down the stairs outside the school, she develops amnesia and has to rebuild her life from the pieces she remembers. The author, Gabrielle Zevin, introduces the reader to the characters as Naomi sees them, with very honest opinions and develops Naomi's character as Naomi develops her own personality, and because of this, the reader feels very close to her. The story overall is not too different from many teen-novels today and involves many of the same themes, such as wanting to be popular and struggling through hard classes, but Gabrielle Zevin writes in a way that keeps the reader interested, and it is definitely worth reading. Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac reminds me of the Sloppy Firsts series and if you have read either, you are sure to like the other. I strongly recommend that you read Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin as it will keep you reading and you won't ever get bored! ( )