Sam Tschida

It’s a one-off trade paperback, so literally I’m shelving this as lower middlebrow in my mind, but it’s not a great premise; it’s a bad premise. It’s not realistic, of course; you don’t get discharged from the hospital not knowing who you are. And it’s a moderate-length novel, so there’s going to be problems, but everything seems good, so the problems will be revealed. So it’s set to be like a tragi-comedy, or something, something I never liked the sound of. It’s supposed to be a romantic comedy, I guess, so it’s not like it’s going on the climate prophet’s must-read list, or, since standing in the middle of the circle usually isn’t a good idea, it just doesn’t seem like it would work on that level, since…. I don’t know. It seems like we’re mostly going to be meeting people part of the collective madness. And, it’s also a book about not enjoying money—finding problems with the lifestyle of the rich and influential, you know. So…. what are we left with? I’m not frothing at the mouth yet so I might finish it; it might be lower-middle level curious, to see what the big secrets are, but we’re basically looking at the book equivalent of a non-fun party, you know, like: there’s waste, and then there’s wasteful-waste-by-not-even-enjoying-it, right. Which is I suppose, the normal thing, right. Tried and tested. Which is probably why some people party habitually, because it never satisfies them, you know. If it did, they could diversify their interests.

…. And I mean, don’t get me wrong: amnesia can be a great ploy to make you explore identity; they do it in ‘Jason Bourne’, and ‘Jason Bourne’ is a moderately good book/series, and there’s nothing wrong per se with writing girly romances. But the difference is that, although math professors or whoever probably mock Robert Ludlum for not being an IQ 300 super-duper genius, it seems like the sort of thing with a certain amount of confidence, and which (therefore) delivers a certain sort of quality. This is more like…. “Aww, shucks, did I really have to be a girl? I hate my dress; I hate my life; I have a rich boyfriend, but guess what—I hate money! I’m trusting that my instincts are ~~all wrong….” And it’s like…. ☹️

…. I try not to bring on the whole punk-rock-revolution-or-else, the-beatings-will-continue-until-morale-improves, re: vegetarianism, (or in general), but if you have kinda a weak heroine that no one respects, such that even if she stumbles upon a bang-up good idea like vegetarianism, with a lock-stock-and-barrel case for it along several fronts, (health, animal welfare, the environment, even not mindlessly copying others and forcing yourself to think for a change), people just immediately tell her to drop dead, all, (waves), Oh, yeah, but you’re a ~girl~, Mia—all you do is suck cock, not ~think~, not even about ~food~—

Then I would say that that’s both a problem in itself, and part of a larger problem.

…. It’s not a great book. It’s like you either tell her she’s wrong or buy into her theory that she’s no good, basically. Not great options.

At least it’s a great title, you know….

It is kinda general lit—the really pop-style romances have a lot of sex-anatomy stuff going on, and it doesn’t feel like that’s going to happen here; this is more like sitting around the cooler at work torching Bravo reality shows with the Dick, sorry, Doctor Who fan, flirting or whatever—although I have read pop-style romances that make more sense than this, you know.

…. I mean, she decides her character is a vegetarian, then that vegetarianism is ‘bougie’. To be a little ‘bougie’, the self-hatred is ‘palpable’. I guess the idea is that the honest, violent way is to say, “I’m going to get mine and put it, fur intact, into my mouth, and slay the man who tries to stop me, and everything else is the higher consciousness scam, you know.” I mean, even many meat eaters aren’t that war-paint-y; they’re just habit-controlled, you know. Never thought to ask. Or are we maintaining that abusing/genetically mutating/caging, and killing chickens somehow helps Black people, you know? It’s like, in New York in the Civil War time, it was probably like, Free the censoreds? But what about the Irish? The Irish are a little inferior, but really they’re not so bad—they have a right not to be at the bottom, you know. It’s like that hierarchy thinking. I’m not saying that chickens can talk. They can’t. But people think that kindness to a chicken—just to treat it like an animal instead of a rock or a pile of dung or something—is like endangering the poor man’s place in the hierarchy, you know. God, and it’s feminine! Marx died so that men would never lose their place in this world to anything feminine!

…. I guess it’s the nature of words, you know; all yeah, for all its easy charm, it’s ~very~ caught up in being a book…. You show a picture, a picture of an attractive, wealthy person, unless you consciously remind yourself to be resentful and suspicious, it’s very doable to buy into it. You read: “JP was attractive and wealthy”, basically just because it’s words—because it’s the mind, you know—you’re waiting for the “but”. But we get to kill him, right? (laughs) Maybe in a Hollywood B-movie you’d immediately see a handsome suit and decide to kill him, but not in a magazine. Different media. Different dreams…. And yes, I hate how “Gettysburg” (1993) ruined, “different dreams”, you know. But that doesn’t have to lead to, perfect-rad forever, gotta toe that line, why do people remain different, you know?…. Not that that’s Mia’s story, it’s just…. Restlessness. Internet commies aren’t committed, educated Marxists; maybe half the time they wouldn’t vote “left” on taxes or whatever. (Bureaucrats are the left? Fuck, we’re in trouble! Save me, unsympathetic, uncaring man! LOL. 👨🏻). But they are restless. Mindless words, sometimes: but very very wordy; distinctively word-based, you know.

…. The scientist really pisses me off. I can sorta get his “paternalism”, as he accurately terms it, for the sake of the girl’s safety, but then he just totally goes off the rails by saying, The academy is hierarchical. All of life should be hierarchical. Why are there male models, anyway? I’m not a male model. Maybe modeling rests upon shaky science; we could cobble together a little legislation—it’s like bro, you’re literally just squealing because you don’t think you’re handsome or attractive. Get over it. And ~business~ isn’t really hierarchical. I guess I don’t understand how the cool people can be both anti-oppression and pro-hierarchy, you know; it really doesn’t make any sense. All I know is that he and his friends have made this little fantasy world in academia where you need some big kahuna’s say-so before you can have a thought, and that’s not worth dealing with, especially at the cost of a pint of blood’s worth of money and an arm and a leg’s worth of bureaucracy, but here in the real world, if you’ll permit the saying, I don’t need anyone’s permission before I spend my money, even if he fucking thinks he invented molecules and taught them how to play chess, you know. I saw a male model in Esquire wearing a very nice pair of shoes that costs fifty or sixty dollars—a very normal price for quality stylish shoes. Even if you can’t afford the shoes, you can appreciate someone embodying beauty, you know…. I hate to be offensive, but scientists represent anti-racism and anti-elitism when piss tastes good, you know. Many scientists study so that they can be better than other people at things other people aren’t even “good enough” to honestly like, confident in their ability to get other people who don’t honestly like it to help them bully the person, basically. Why do scientists have to think they’re doing the One Fucking Thing, right? Can’t they just grow up and be happy? 🤔😩

…. “Do any scientific studies say that piss doesn’t taste good? Are there peer-reviewed studies that give you fucking God’s permission to have that idea, handed down to you by your superiors the kings of science…. or are you being bad?”….

“Permission denied by SCIENCE!!” 🧪 😩

…. I realize they’re crazy once-born models living a fast life; that said, it just seems like such an idiotic sop to the system to have this scientist who has nothing but contempt for you, tagging along like a loyal dog sidekick who also wants to eat you and pee on the body, right. In real life, he’d probably denounce you, tell you in great detail all the many things he hates about rich people, and say some borderline sexist things while cursing, and then leave.

I realize that Sometimes things can happen in books that wouldn’t really happen, you know, but it shouldn’t be ~bullshit~, you know, like swap out romance for adventure and real once-borners for fake witches, and you almost have “Charmed”, or something, right?

…. I hate to sound like the caricature of a Swiftie/Directioner or whatever, but I think she’s a self-hating white girl. She’s always, in this white girl voice, saying, Down with the white girl. Vive le anti-Anglo chick gossip! ~You know; there’s not even like a strong non-white girl presence, you know, except for the loyal dog assimilated boy scientist who borderline hates her, right; but no REAL character…. It’s like a monologue of how she hates herself. Disguised as a rom-com.

It’s a lot.

…. It’s a negative rom com. It’s like Nicholas Sparks, only instead of a man who thinks he’s hot shit in an insecure czarist way, it’s like a woman who thinks she’s a pile of shit because she’s probs like the czarina’s abused lap dog or something.

(shakes head) (mutters indistinctly)

…. And no one’s so assimilated that you’re Black but the only Black thing about you is that you say, “I’m Black but not stereotypical”, one time. No street, doesn’t know anybody street, no music—of any kind—, no politics, no church, no random harassment stories, just…. Oh yeah. Black. No biggie.

That can only happen to you if you’re just a hallucination of a lazy author.

…. I know that girls are boys and boys are girls now, but I really don’t get how you can walk around for like two days or whatever in a dress that’s bloody until it starts to smell, right. It’s like, I could use some of my billionaire partner’s money to buy a change of clothes…. I ~could~, but I find my current status not to be wanting. Dirty, bloody, smelly clothing: what’s not to like?

(Hermes) Ok mommy: I want to be a girl. Gotta do it right: gotta be >, let’s see…. Oh, I know! I could get raped! I could kill someone, go to jail, and get raped! ~It’s like, “No…. You’re supposed to want the ~~good~~ experiences….” (screws up face) Why’s that? Are they authentic? (beat) Oh, you mean: because good is alright…. (beat) I thought it had to be summat com’ikated.

~And she is wearing dirty, smelly, bloody clothes as part of this hyper-feminine crash-and-burn, so I guess that IS kinda like killing someone and getting raped in jail…. [“‘lol’ removed to honor the victim-prisoner’s family—THE EDITOR.]

…. But I don’t know, I’ll finish it. It’s almost amusing…. Toss up whether it’s more vain than the Philology Club Book of the Month type novel or book, you know: but it’s in the running, certainly.

…. The closest the girl comes to having agency is shaming some male, for not obeying ~The Rules of Dating~, right.

(smiles) It was a good title.

…. I’m not sure whether it’s more based on naivety or cynicism; it’s an unstable work in which neither stance predominates.

(Irish boxer, 1880) The good people fight for our good, brave homeland, Ireland of the Elves, for the naivety that’s in it…. But the English put the rage on me! (time traveling fairies giggle and pop in and out of existence) Who’s there? If you’re English, I’ll fight you for Ireland!

…. Yeah: she gave away all her money; she decided money is rotten. Saint Francis makes his appearance at last.

(Franciscans chanting it up)
(girl in expensive, yet dirty, smelly, bloody dress falls in behind them, tries to make her scat singing chanting sound like the Latin)
(the boyfriend) “Bitch, you come on back, now!…. Come on, I’ll sing a song: don’t you want me baby—don’t you want me, ah-ah, ah….”
(skanky Franciscan) Dammit, (Voldemort), I’m gonna go be a scientist! I hate you! I hate money! Scientists hate money; they’re cool!…. And guess what, dick: ~~he’ll be blacccccc!!!!~~

It’s like 1977, or something, only…. Like 1977 trickles down, and now it’s a pop style, and actually it’s a manager’s special, because you have to eat it within twenty minutes or the bacteria will get in it, right…. (smiles) That’s popular culture: always has, always will….

…. Either that, or she’s a “criminal”: Fox News Update: woman (blah blah blah, criminal!); (angry boy child voice), “Let’s get her!”

Or she’s a Franciscan. God, can we combine them? She can be a crime-fighting Franciscan who got forgiven by Jesus for her Democrat Party past, right…. Oh, Isis, somebody needs to take this girl under their wing….

…. There are, eventually, kinda “ghetto”, if you like, or kinda hip-hop Black-culture Black people: but they’re not given even brief centrality in the story, and especially not the men. And I realize that hip-hop guys have a whole way of carrying themselves, right: but I think we get caught in, “The warriors of the enemy race are dangerous; their women are ok, as long as they’re pitiable”, right…. And basically, it’s just: “gangsters have money: so screw them. Screw all people with money, and especially the ones I don’t like.” ~white liberal on people in certain neighborhoods, right.

(shrugs) But, although I like to write and I don’t think I’m being aggressive, you know: the qualification is that people are entitled to their stupid story, no matter how stupid it is. You read Albert Ellis, or even Jen Sincero, you read secular psychology, or almost any kind of psychology, you read those “five things to remember” lists: you start to delude yourself that people could get out of hell free if they really wanted to, right. And, in a sense, they absolutely could, I believe. ~~But they look at themselves as victims~~, so they say “rich people always….” and “…. to me, always to me, this happens!”, and somehow they haven’t gotten what they need, I don’t know from who, to get out of the victim mode, out of not having free will, almost, such that they absolutely cannot be given a book and get out of it, and they absolutely cannot be argued out of it, no matter how conscientious you think you’re being, you know. How relatable. Until people are ready, only shit is relatable: and they have no choice, right. Their hour hasn’t come yet. They’re still forced to choose victimhood.

So, yeah: people are entitled to their stories, even bogus ones. Sometimes things start to work for you, in at least some areas of life, but you have no idea how different that makes you from—I guess, ‘neurotypical’ is the more polite way to say it….

…. I know the world is a strange place, but I can’t decide if this more disturbingly…. Something, or just flat-out unrealistic.

Wealthy people want to associate with other wealthy people; they want to look good with handsome, beautiful people. They don’t kidnap the working poor and force them to go on dates with them, right. I mean, there are bad rich people, but this plot is like the equivalent of the counterfeit penny operation, you know. Not intended as a diss, just a: not on your list of credible threats, right. I mean, there are A LOT of people who would HATE being with wealthy people, and no wealthy person is going to kidnap them and force marriage on them, right.

I don’t know what the hell this is based on, you know. An online search doesn’t give the impression that she’s wealthy, and I have the strong feeling that the “research” is probably reading through “People” magazine while trashing its editors/celebrities, right, like…. Where do you even start with that.

But the worst part is while she’s holding up for scorn the whole ‘kidnapping poor people for dates’, she’s also probably subconsciously thinking the girl should just shut up and go along with it…. And yet, maybe she shouldn’t dress up for her Instagram date, right! Like, intentionally take a selfie of yourself, after getting punched in the face or something, and then post, hashtag, agency is adoring.

I literally don’t know where to start with this, because there’s just so much: so many things to tackle first, right: but basically, Who the hell are you, and what do you want, right? Do you have any fucking idea at all?

…. Although, to be fair, I found this less bullshit-rich than this princess sci-fi book I read once—it really doesn’t matter which one—where the main character was this post-apocalyptic princess whose father sets her up on the giant ship-society that happens after the end of the world: but that isn’t cool for her because, she doesn’t know what she wants, but it’s not this, right…. This book irritates me less both because: (a) things irritate me less now; I mean, my other adventure books were like the Narnia adventures, right; Christian resentment runneth deep, right, but also (b) a childish, irresponsible girl who doesn’t know what she wants or goes out on dates or whatever, IS a LOT less bullshit-rich than the post-apocalypse sci-fi girl with pretentious of humanitarianism or some goddamn thing, right…. Who’s childish and insecure because she has no idea what she wants, Just Like, in throwaway romance novels that make fun of themselves, right.

(shrugs) So there’s that.

…. But yeah: basically I didn’t know whether the stance was that you’re “supposed” to take this crap seriously, or whether it’s the typical pop culture self-assassination, the classic popular disdain for the popular, right…. Ultimately I don’t think she decided. That’s how it is for most people, right. For some reason that seems to be the factory default set by the manufacturer, right. You could ask someone or something why, but basically I guess the answer would be some form of, Mind your business ~you know. Like I asked my phone-tarot something about one of my crystals that I’d forgotten, and the response was basically, You’re not at home. (The crystal’s at home.) Go fuck yourself. Ok?

Like, bro.

We all interpret tarot into English or whatever differently, right, if we do it at all, right.

But yeah: it’s funny, in the CS Lewis movie they’re like Woman is soul, man is mind; and in some other movie, you know, it’s like Blacks are soul/music, white men are mind…. So it’s too bad that the whole interracial thing didn’t produce ecstasy for them; I guess because one of them was basically a white man who was intermittently black-skinned, you know. Beauty of print, right?…. Never read a worse characterized/realized person…. You know, since some random TV show, basically.

And as for gender—fucking forget it, right. It could have been called “Memoir of the Disposable Femme” or something; I would almost have believed it if she were married and worried that she were a burden on her husband, right….

…. There are bad things in the world, but it’s just too gimmicky to make the big bad reveal what she made it, you know. ~Oh, my god, people have ~sex! Men have dirty, dirty ~sex, so that people can be ~poor. (shakes fist) The Victorian Nurses’ Decency and Social Rehabilitation Committee will hear about this…. And Fox News!

I mean, I’m not saying that all sex is good. I’m not saying no one makes bad decisions. I’m not even saying you can’t be a Christian, if that’s what you want. It can be better than a Christoform gossip, you know…. Just superstitious, control, right…. I do make, “The Christians” statements, sometimes, because I don’t know how else to say it; some people say “evangelicals”, but it could equally be Catholics, or even liturgical Protestants, even ~liberal liturgical Protestants~. (Some of those lib Prots are so sleepy, their liberalism is like a dream they had, right. A dream of visiting a museum, you know. Museum of Parthenogenic Insects, or something….) Although if any Christian could be decent, it could happen on any one of the religion’s major branches, right…. If you see some girl wearing a cross, you don’t know if she’s “the Christians”, right. You don’t know why she does it. It’s not your business. Mind your business, right.

That said, the whole Christoform gossip thing is so…. Traditional. I know people think that the 70s are passé, but some sex scandals are so…. I mean, it’s gimmicky. No rich guy is as foppish/incompetent evil as that guy is, and no girl is as much the One-Dimensional Disposable Femme as the girl is. I know that the girl is getting together with the other guy at the end, but it almost feels like it should be building up to him shooting them with a laser or something, you know. Gawd, and he’s a ~~scientist~~. Knowing the 115 Basic Chemical Substances or whatever LITERALLY makes him a better person than the rest of us, right?

And I swear to God, it’s like the two worst Black characters I’ve ever encountered in print. The whiteface Black guy, the stand-in for the author’s father or some goddamn thing, the only character who matters, even though he has no emotional content at all; he’s like…. He’s like the goddamn cell phone metaphor thing that never gets developed. And the stereotypical ghetto girl who talks in light dialect, never emerges as a personality, and exists only to move the plot along, like, ~~EVEN MORE~~, right…..

…. People are just naive when it comes to religion, you know. It’s like, Yeah, gonna take the all the worst bits of religion, take out the weird stuff, stop saying God, and away we go! “Behold, you will suffer, be oppressed, and be forbidden joy, because the L—ah…. because that’s just how it is, mate; you don’t want to suffer, mate, but I think that’s kinda weird, yeah?” “I’m a very pious (whatever), and for many years I struggled with punishing people, negating them, and stigmatizing them, until one day, during (spiritual practice)—“ “Excuse me, let me stop you right there. Religion is weird. Fuck you. Suffer and die alone and unwanted…. Not least because you’re not Generation (ABC). 👌”

It doesn’t get much more naive than that, you know.

(Like you killed the baby, and kept the bloody, shitty bath water, you know. Lol.)

…. And, you know, I wanted to end it like, Naah bro: whatev, right, like: But yeah. But yeah….

But it is pretty bad.

It’s bad.

“I may be a criminal, but at least I’m a white girl who hates herself, and not a blaccie, right?”

Yeah…. About that.

And I mean, being honest about yourself has to do with ~words~, not taking selfies of yourself when you haven’t showered in a week, you know. That’s not what photography is really for, IMO. Negative things are meant for, words…. And it’s also not that ‘honest’, really, to quote one line from a famous prayer, when it’s like, “Oh yeah, and was that from the Bible?…. The Bible is that book with Jesus, right?…. Or was that Harry Potter? Was it part of a series?”

You know, like: you make this announcement, like: Truth is big, people! Truth is…. BIG! ~And you IMMEDIATELY start lying, right. 🤦

…. And, yeah: I would never want to say that sometimes people haven’t done a lot of work since the 70s on things like sex abuse, right: if a girl is a business owner or a professional and her business is to do a little something, then that’s sex work; and if she’s a bakery employee, and you treat her like her job is to put a bun in her oven, then that’s actually quid pro quo sexual harassment, you know…. But this, writer, doesn’t get that, you know: she’s just thrashing, a real Normie Norma, basically. And it’s unfortunate: because there are a lot of people who remind you of that—recent retirees, Christians, maybe, or maybe just Taurus, Virgo, or Cancer people, maybe—who are totally fine, you know. (They might not even listen to the fucking Eagles, right….) But sometimes people are just getting up in peoples business, and thrashing, right—cause they don’t know….

…. But yeah: I actually find that now that I’m not a Christian it’s a little easier to be patient with people whose idea of Christianity is not doing a PhD on “Jesus’ Alternative Plan”, as one very generic-sounding Richard Rohr book was apparently called, right. Some people join the church to practice Christianity as a folk custom, and it seems inevitable that some people would answer to that description, right. I just find it a little childish when they act out, basically. ~All right, Christian: you know you’re not the only one who lives in this village…. Yes yes, we children of the devil love sex, and you find the experience entirely disagreeable…. Yes, ok: I’ll watch my back because hell is too good for me, although I must say, hell might not be so bad this time of year, and I hear that the prices are to die for…. Yes, ok: I love you too…. And may you receive like blessings for yourself, Christian, although perhaps with less spittle and better enunciation, right….

…. If you try, you can betray everywhere, right.

You can hate yourself, you can wipe shit on the faces of professional pretty girls, you can bring your mom to the club, you can facilitate racial reconciliation and/or send some homies to jail, right—all we really needed to make it perfect was Stephen Foster, you know.

“I jumped aboard the telegraph and traveled down the river,
Electric fluid was magnified, and killed five hundred—

👹!

Good night, California! It was a good show! The lumenproles of California, stay safe, stay sane, stay consensual! Unless—

👹!

😉”

“I can be friends with a blaccgirl, as long as she’s willing to apologize.”

…. —Mia, you sick bitch! Let’s get married! C’mon; c’mon baby…. You know you’re not as smart as I am! Oh, by the way, we don’t have to invite my side of the family to the wedding, do we? You know how I feel about 👹s.
—(giggles, then, vaguely) It’s the story of our love….

…. Yeah.

An interesting project would be to talk about this book vs “Trainwreck” (2015), right. Similar—hard-drinking woman meets intelligent man. The movie’s probably a better story in a lot of ways, at least in the points it explicitly makes, although in at least one way it’s big about Following the Rules, right. “This is my friend Human Being, sorry Sarah, sorry, Cynt—Cynt is her name. She’s my other-gender friend of another race. Smile, H—Cynt…. Okay, fifteen seconds is up—scram, kid; we don’t want to scare people. That’s equally important to not being a Nazi, you know. You gotta balance it….”

Although in this book, Max is the hero very much because we don’t have to look at his epithet face, you know.

—Mom, I found myself a man! He’s a blaccman, but he doesn’t go to church or listen to music; he doesn’t have a family, or experience racism! And he’s a scientist! And, because this is a novel, I don’t have to look at his ugly face!
—What? Speak louder! I can’t hear you over this club music…. Why did you bring me here?

If you really try…. You CAN betray them all, children. Every last one….

…. There are just no words for the dog slop of the last chapter, and I was expecting it to be bad, you know.… (mere)

Siri, Who am I? is a great name and a great premise for a novel. What if you could only rely on your phone to tell you who you are? Would it tell the truth or would it be carefully edited and filtered ‘best life’ versions? That’s what Mia has to go through after she wakes up in hospital to find her memory gone and stitches in her head. Who was she? Who is she? It’s up to Mia to discover herself via her social media and with the assistance of her boyfriend’s house sitter, Max.
Mia’s journey to who she is comes in a roundabout, comic way as she sifts through her Instagram to try to get clues about her life. Where does she live? What does she do for work? Who are her friends? It turns out that her boyfriend is a multi-millionaire who owns a chocolate company and his Ferrari is at her disposal. But they also had an argument and he’s decamped to Switzerland to cool down. (As you do). Max is a neuroscientist and Mia’s cautious guardian throughout her discoveries. He’s got his own problems though after his ex has sabotaged his research but there is just something about the chemistry between him and Mia…it’s a wild ride that takes the pair to many unexpected places and people as Mia finds out that maybe she just doesn’t really like her old self…
This is a light, comedic novel. You do have to suspend your disbeliefs (like, what kind of hospital discharges a patient who doesn’t know who she is? And being America, who is going to pay the hospital bill?) Mia also runs around in the same Prada cocktail dress for the majority of the novel, which struck me as a bit odd (surely, she could have used some of her boyfriend’s money to pop into H&M) but of course it’s very symbolic when it does come off. There are lots of coincidences and a neat wrapping up of all the loose ends, but overall it’s great, light fun. Mia’s lost memory leading to extreme reliance on Instagram does wear a bit thin after a while, but introducing Max’s dilemmas and the feisty Crystal does help a lot. I also wished at times that Mia had forgotten how to speak in #cringe #toomanyhashtags, but the footnotes throughout the story helped me cope with that. The footnotes were a nice touch and also helped to chart Mia’s growth throughout the novel. It’s almost a coming-of-age novel at times as Mia starts to realise that she hasn’t been a great person in the past and starts to try to rectify that. (First Millennial step – no filters). I found the last 100 pages the most refreshing, most likely due to the increasing doses of reality from Crystal (who says and does exactly what she thinks) and the focus off Mia’s desire to get her own way and force the her past and future into the boxes she wanted.
I did enjoy the book, and it demonstrates that Sam Tschida knows how to write witty dialogue and quirky stories with a plot that never stops.… (mere)

Siri, Who Am I? is laugh-out-loud funny – as in splitting-your-sides, tears-running-down-your-face, can’t-even-talk-you’re-cracking-up-so-hard kind of funny!

A tale for a modern era, a young woman wakes up in the hospital without a clue who she is. Mia doesn’t have any ID on her when she lands in the emergency ward, but she does have her cell phone, a set of house keys and the yellow Prada party dress she was wearing when admitted.

In a moment of inspiration (or is it desperation?), Mia grabs her cell phone and starts going through her contacts list and apps for clues. This doesn’t prove as easy as one would have thought, however, and she embarks on a madcap search to retrace her steps via her Instagram posts in order to – literally – find herself.

In a world where nothing really happens unless it’s posted online, Mia begins to question who she was pre-accident and if that’s really the Mia she was meant to be.

Funny, charming, and beguiling, this novel is sure to put a smile on your face an Instagrammable glimmer in your heart. Five stars for an original and highly-entertaining read!

A big thank you to Sam Tschida, Quirk Books, and NetGalley for providing a complimentary Advance Reader Copy in exchange for this honest review.

#SiriWhoAmI
#SamTschida
#QuirkBooks
#NetGalley… (mere)