Siri, Who Am I? by Sam Tschida

So my very first impression of this book is that it is not a romance. There is a romantic component, but the main thrust (tee hee) of the plot is that Mia needs to figure out who she is and the type of person she is after experiencing a traumatic head injury. All she has is her cell phone, which holds many social media clues. I’m calling this a Millennial mystery.

Mia gets help from her boyfriend’s (is he really her bf?) house sitter, a black neuroscientist named Max. They drive all over LA in her boyfriend’s Ferrari, she wears a Prada dress because it’s the only thing she has, and applies Chanel lipstick like it’s armor.

I couldn’t connect to this woman finding out who she was when she was surrounded by the trappings of wealth and convince that this was her life. She had all these opportunities fall into her lap and eventually she learns that she hustled for them and her life wasn’t roses and sunshine, but I just…didn’t care. It wasn’t enough of a mystery/who-dun-it to be intriguing, it wasn’t enough of a find yourself exploration, it wasn’t enough of a romance. This book was just a collection of diluted ideas. It’s the Jungle Juice of books. You’ll drink it all and afterward wonder why you bothered.

I did admire the sociological commentary on the power and lies of social media, but for the majority of the book it was “you can lie on IG and be the person you want to be!” When Mia turns the corner and starts showing warts and all (#nofilter) she does it for Max, to get him back, more than she does it for herself. Doing it for herself becomes a happy consequence.