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A friend of mine used to pick up Emma (Jane Austen) every year in an attempt to finish it, but the character of Emma annoyed her so much that it took her well into middle age to accomplish the goal of finishing the book. I couldn’t relate. Emma’s (albeit irritating) naivete and inflated self-importance were necessary to her character development and the plot of the book. Same is true for the character of Mia in Sam Tschida’s Siri, Who Am I? — I promise: the Austen comparison ends there. 

I admit I picked this book up because I thought it would be a YA novel that undermined the image culture of social media saturating the world, and the teen world in particular. (Although I typically reach for the nonfiction work of Sherry Turkle or Jean M. Twenge in that regard, I’m open to bolstering confirmation bias through all genres. Let no one claim otherwise.) This is not a YA book. I was wrong on all my cover of the book judgements. And I’ll tell you why.

5 reasons why Siri, Who Am I? is not an anti-social media YA book

1. The age of the protagonist.
   Okay, so the premise of the book is the protagonist (at that point, name unknown — see book title) wakes up in the hospital with amnesia. She doesn’t know her name, her age, her birthday, her address, who her friends are, what her life is like, or what she is like. As the book develops, it turns out she’s somewhere in her mid- to late- twenties. YA books are all about teens. The moment your protagonist ages out of high school or maybe even college, sorry. You’re off the YA shelf.
   
2. Teenagers (AKA readers of YA) would rip Tchida a new one for regional anachronisms.
   Okay. It’s one regional anachronism. The story is set in Long Beach and travels all over LA and Orange counties — a region of the country, I happen to have grown up in and consider myself relatively familiar with…so familiar, in fact, that I can validate Tschida’s description of the Long Beach Museum of Art where Mia’s amnesia-inducing injury occurred. Spot on. (And, if you’re local to the area, go there….once the world opens again.) BUT, and this is a but bigger than the butts of any of the beautiful characters in this book — and they’re all beautiful characters…which works for LA — Mia repeatedly drives along Pacific Coast Highway. Every time she narrates that fact, she refers to it as the PCH. (Ex from ch.10 : “…we head north on the PCH toward Long Beach…”)
   I, a gracious and forgiving reader (don’t laugh), can overlook the fact that I have never heard any local refer to PCH as the PCH. Not once, let alone the forty to four hundred times Mia does in this book. (Too many? What? Did it stand out too much to me? Hit a nerve? Annoy me as much as Emma annoyed my friend? No way.) I’ve decided the author and editing team must have been fans of SNL’s “The Californians” thereby making the offense forgivable. The freeways are referred to as the 5, the 405, the 10 in Southern Cal vernacular. It’s a simple case of applying the pattern incorrectly like a child who tells you they runned a race.
   Teenagers, though, cherish the opportunity to mock adults who think they know what they do not. (Trust me, my day job is in a high school.) That is all they would take from this book. That, and how pretty the characters are. Which brings me to #3.
   
3. The characters are all gorgeous.
   Not just attractive. Gorgeous. How do you enervate the image and filter saturated culture of social media (and Insta, in particular, which plays quite a role in Mia’s search for her true self — she uses her old posts to figure out who she is — not Siri)? You don’t. At most, you can prod it a bit from the inside of the box it built. That may be what Sam Tschida is attempting to do here, but the book falls short of the standard I’d set up for it before I’d cracked the spine.
   
4. The inclusion of sex
   I’d like to say the sex, so I’m writing it as a reason but teenage sex occurs in YA (see Rainbow Rowell and so many more). So I can’t use sex as a reason this book is not YA. It’s more that the sex occurs between consenting adults. (see reason #1)

5. The number of times Mia takes a selfie and posts it.

It never changes. From being let out of the hospital and onward, once Mia has her phone, it’s multiple selfies each day, every day. And you’ll get to read when she receives likes on those posts, even some of the comments. (Actually, this all sounds rather YA, doesn’t it? Damn it. Hmmmm. How to redeem this reason….Got it! YA is not my point on this one.) All this narration around social media and social media posts lack a tinge — or should I say filter? — of negativity. Mia likes social media and it plays an important role throughout the novel and the plotline. One might even say it’s her saving grace making the novel pro social media..

Siri, Who Am I? could be read by high school aged teens. And it does encourage honesty and authenticity on social media. I will give it that. But it is not the book I expected to be reading when I read it. Can you blame me? I claim being influenced by the cover art and title of the book. (Confession: I judge books by their covers. And you do, too.)

MY RATING: 2.5/5 …… Do you agree?

Shop the book on Amazon.

RATINGS GUIDE

٭ = DNF, would not recommend
٭٭ = would not recommend
٭٭٭ = enjoyable, would recommend
٭٭٭٭ = very good, would recommend
٭٭٭٭٭ = amazing, would definitely recommend