Review: Sia by Josh Grayson

Sia

Author: Josh Grayson
Published: November 20, 2013

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.

*a copy was provided by Josh Grayson for review purposes*

Unfortunately, Sia did not live up to my expectations. When I read the premise I thought, this is going to be so good! I just had to get my hands on a copy and find out for myself. I just had to know what happens to the girl who wakes up on a park bench not knowing who she is, where she is or how she got there. I had to know how she copes with being homeless and then finding out how rich she is and how terrible she was before she lost her memory. I had to know if she would ever get her memory back and if she did how she would feel once it happened. And I had to know about this Kyle that she falls for and what happens to them-do they end up together or does he give her the cold shoulder because of the person she was before her memory loss?

I found the answers to all of these questions, yet I felt that there wasn't any kind of depth to the plot or the characters. It all seemed to only skim the surface of what could have been a truly amazing story. Quite often we come across books that deal with memory loss and quite often they don't live up to their expectations. I was hoping that Sia would be one of those books that would exceed it, but that wasn't the case. The story progressed far to quickly for any kind of emotional depth to be reached and I couldn't connect well with Sia at all. She seemed shallow even in her quest to change herself. Not to mention everything just fell into place far too easily for her. The struggles she faced weren't much of struggles, especially when only a few pages later it was resolved which no problems whatsoever. It was like what Sia wants, Sia gets. I found myself rolling my eyes a few times when it happened. The first couple of times it wasn't that big of a deal, but when it happened over and over again it was just annoying.

Sia's friends from before her memory loss were just ridiculous. They were shallow and vain, only caring about their appearance and whenever Sia tried to tell them she didn't want to wear makeup or tight clothing or high heeled shoes, they would cut her off and say "sure you do sweetie" and then rush her to the bathroom to "fix" her. Her boyfriend Duke was really lame and I honestly couldn't even see why he was even in the story. We got no background story on them at all except how they became a couple and that was told by one of her friends. In fact, we really weren't told anything much about her past and the stories we were told were extremely short. Like I said, everything moved way too quickly. There wasn't much explanation or descriptions of anything. My favorite part of the whole story was when she was homeless.

Overall, I think this story had great potential. I feel that if a little more time had been spent on it it could have been a story of an amazing journey of a girl trying to rediscover the person she was while trying to fix the wrongs in her life.

I rate this book:

Author

About Josh Grayson

Josh Grayson was born in Mexico, raised in Massachusetts, and now lives in Virginia. It was his move to the South that stirred his imagination and gave him the courage to start writing. During his free time, Josh enjoys reading, jogging, swimming, and watching YouTube videos.

Sia is his debut YA novel. (Available 11/20/13)

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