Sia by Josh Grayson

Title: Sia

Author: Josh Grayson

Published: November 20, 2013

Format Read/Pages: eBook/306

How I Acquired It: NetGalley

Date Finished: December 16, 2013

Forgetting was only the beginning. 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 still, 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.

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To be honest, I had a lot of problems with Sai. The story is a bit overdone and unbelievable at times, but most of it I was able to get over, some not so much.

My first problem with it happened on page seven and made me really debate putting it down and not continuing. When Sia see herself for the first time to try and jog her memory this is expressed;

                “I am pleased to see I am an attractive girl.”

Really?! You have no memory!!! Does it really matter if you are attractive, if I was in a position where I was living on the streets I wouldn’t mind being as unattractive as possible, as to not call attention to myself. But in all reality, it really bothered me that she cared what she looked like.

Another thing that annoyed me was the fact that she didn’t find the nearest police station to try and find out if anyone was looking for her. She was wearing expensive exercise clothing, more than likely she is missed by someone. This all could have been taken care of a lot sooner if she just used her head and made the logical decision to look for information about herself.

The interactions between the girls made me feel as though Grayson did not have a real grasp on young female dynamics. It makes some of the conversations seem stiffer and laughable at times. I also feel as though he took every rich girl/kid stereotype and threw them all together to create the characters he had in Sia’s former friend group. I really highly doubt that all well off young adult are that haughty and unbearable to be around.

The overall story makes me want to believe something like this can happen, but I don’t think that it would have come at such ease for the characters. Something that I really appreciated about the story was that it showcased a great organization, The American Red Cross and Grayson depicted it in a way that I could actually see it operating.

As this is Grayson’s debut, I would be interested in seeing how he develops as a writer in the future and what else he has to offer the literary world. 

3 Stars