Restart

Restart by Gordon Korman, 243 pages

When Chase falls off the roof, he loses his memory.  He doesn’t remember what he, or any of his family members look like.  He doesn’t remember anything from his old life.    But when school starts and he meets his old friends again, and gets to know his classmates, he starts to realize that he may have been a pretty awful person before his fall.  Chase gets to know some of the kids that he used to bully and finds that he really likes them.  He doesn’t like his two former best friends nearly as well.  Can Chase find a way to reconcile who he used to be with the person he wants to be now?  This book, which is told from the point of view of Chase and, in alternating chapters, a few of the kids in his class, is an excellent story.  I would give this to older elementary kids who like realistic fiction.

We Were Liars

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart                      225 pages

This was a wonderful, beautiful, sad, magical book.  Four teenagers, Cadence, Johnny, Mirren, and Gat, three of whom are privileged Sinclairs, and one who is not, have spent every summer together on their family’s island since they were eight years old.  They have the best summers together.  During the school year they don’t keep in touch well, but when summer begins they pick up right where they left off the previous summer.  The summer they are fifteen, after their grandmother, Tipper Sinclair, has died, something happens.  Cadence has some sort of accident and can’t remember most of the summer.  Her mother doesn’t allow her to come to the island the next summer.  Instead, Cadence goes to visit her father in Europe for the entire summer.  The summer after she turned seventeen, her mother wants her to go to her father again, but Cadence insists on returning to the island.  It is there that Cadence finally begins to regain some of her lost memories, and to understand why she may have chosen to block those memories for so long.  This is a coming-of-age story that a lot of teens would like.

Loud Awake And Lost

Loud Awake And Lost by Adele Griffin, 289 pages

Ember is recovering from a terrible car accident. Her body was badly damaged; the doctor’s find it unlikely that she’ll ever dance again, as she used to do. However, her mind was apparently also somewhat damaged, she has no memory of the two months before the accident. The doctor’s say it’s normal, that the memories may come back but until then Ember feels somewhat lost. She keeps finding evidence that perhaps the last two months before the accident may have been a little different than the rest of her life previous. When she finds out that there was a passenger in her car who died in the accident, Ember is determined to find out more, no matter what. A really good novel about self-discovery, it probably has wider appeal to teen girls than boys.