Review: Sia by Josh Grayson

Title:  Sia

Author:  Josh Grayson

Publication Date:  November 18, 2013

Page Count:  308

Where I got it:  Via Netgalley

Where you can get it: Amazon

How much: List Price 11.99

Format I read it in:  eARC

 

 

Challenges:   2014 Netgalley and Edelweiss Reading Challenge.

 

Description/Blurb:

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.

Sia by Josh Grayson

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The rating should really be 2-1/2 but Goodreads and other places don’t allow half stars.

I received this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I really wanted to love this one, and with ARCs I try to ignore poor editing, typos, grammar errors, et cetera because I know that a lot of times, the book will be edited before it hits the general public. But I also know that that is not ALWAYS the case.

The premise was hugely intriguing. Popular teenage girl wakes up on a park bench and has no idea who she is.

But instead of trying to figure out who she is and where she is from and where she belongs, she essentially goes into hiding and lives like a homeless person and makes no effort to figure out any of her own stuff.

After a week (a week!) on the streets, she gets into it with a soup kitchen volunteer and runs away, getting hit by a car, and I assume the boy from the soup kitchen told the paramedics and cops who she was, because the doctor knows her name and she is reunited with her parents.

I was a bit bothered by how people around her changed so drastically because she wanted them to. It doesn’t work that way in reality, so that was a hard one for me to grasp.

There was an awful lot of cliche and a lot of very simplistic writing. While this made for an easy, quick read, it left me with a lot of…confusion and a lack of closure. It just seemed to easy. The ending felt rushed and the characters at the beginning (the homeless people) seemed more developed, while they were not as integral a part of the story in the long run. Yet her parents, the friends she makes, the friends she had, they seemed flat and one dimensional to me.

I struggled with writing this review because I really, really wanted to like this one, but I feel like I am at a loss here. The author gets a major A for effort because the idea and the premise were awesome, just they could have been executed better. I enjoyed reading, but feel like it could have been so much more.

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**DISCLAIMER** In full compliance with FTC Guidelines, I received a copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for a fair and honest review. I was in no way compensated for this opinion, and the thoughts are my own. Links above will take you to a site where you can PURCHASE a copy. Using those links will take you through an affiliate link and I will receive a small percentage of the purchase cost. You are in no way obligated to use affiliate links and there is no additional cost to do so. 

© 2014, Lisa Pottgen. All rights reserved.

Review: Sia by Josh Grayson is a post from: Just Another Rabid Reader