A compelling exploration of identity is built on a fascinating premise: as the result of a head injury, seventeen-year-old Naomi can’t remember anything that’s happened since she was twelve. She learns that her parents divorced two years before, and she has been estranged from her mother even since. She has to get to know her best friend, her boyfriend, and her school all over again. More important, she has to get to know herself, and she doesn’t necessarily understand who this teenager Naomi is. Does she really like playing on the tennis team? What does she possibly have in common with her jock boyfriend, Ace? Why is she coeditor of the yearbook? She finds herself drawn to a boy named James, a true unknown in a life where everyone has become a stranger. His life on the edge makes her feel alive, and spending time with him is far more appealing than going through the motions of the life she apparently led. As Naomi struggles to make sense of the distance—and difference—between herself at twelve and herself at seventeen, she gains numerous facts and occasional insight from Will, who explains in a series of notes and letters that he is her best friend (and coeditor of the yearbook). But it’s what Will isn’t saying that turns out to be the most important thing in Gabrielle Zevin’s intriguing story. Naomi is adopted and Zevin deftly explores the idea of being an “orphan” in multiple ways throughout her captivating novel. (Age 12 and older)

From the author of Elsewhere and the Birthright trilogy, Gabrielle Zevin's Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac is an imaginative YA novel all about love and second chances.

If Naomi had picked tails, she would have won the coin toss. She wouldn't have had to go back for the yearbook camera, and she wouldn't have hit her head on the steps. She wouldn't have woken up in an ambulance with amnesia.

She certainly would have remembered her boyfriend, Ace. She might even have remembered why she fell in love with him in the first place. She would understand why her best friend, Will, keeps calling her "Chief." She'd get all his inside jokes, and maybe he wouldn't be so frustrated with her for forgetting things she can't possibly remember.

She'd know about her mom's new family. She'd know about her dad's fiancée. She wouldn't have to spend her junior year relearning all the French she supposedly knew already. She never would have met James, the boy with the questionable past and the even fuzzier future, who tells her he once wanted to kiss her.
She wouldn't have wanted to kiss him back.
But Naomi picked heads.

Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac is a 2008 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.