Review: As I Wake by Elizabeth Scott

Publication Date: 9-15-2011

Publisher: Dutton Juvenile

Pages: 224

Format: Hardcover

Source: Library

Challenge: N/A

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Goodreads Summary:

Ava is welcomed home from the hospital by a doting mother, lively friends, and a crush finally beginning to show interest.  There's only one problem: Ava can't remember any of them - and can't shake the eerie feeling that she's not who they say she is.

Ava struggles to break through her amnesiac haze as she goes through the motions of high-school life, but the memories that surface take place in a very different world, where Ava and familiar-faced friends are under constant scrutiny and no one can be trusted.  Ava doesn't know what to make of these visions, or of the boy who is at the center of them all, until he reappears in her life and offers answers....but only in exchange for her trust.

Could you imagine waking up and finding that you don’t remember anyone? When you are expected to begin remembering things around you, you still don’t recognize anything? You don’t recognize your childhood home or your best friends, but instead you keep having the feeling like you don’t really belong.  This is exactly how Ava feels in her life.  She wakes up in the hospital only to realize that she doesn’t recognize where she is.  Ava dreams of a boy and a life that seem to be an entirely different world.  She isn’t sure, but feels like this world is where she is supposed to be.  Like something isn’t quite right.  It isn’t until she meets this boy in person that more things start making sense in her mind.

Since this book was told in Ava’s POV it was a little confusing.  I think it’s because she was confused a lot of the times and didn’t know what was going on in her own life or lives.  I got lost following the plot and wasn’t always sure where to land.  I had a ton of theories going through my mind of what could happen, but those theories changed as I read more.  I eventually caught up to what was going on in the novel, but I still didn’t feel as connected as I hoped.  The story-line was good and it kept me engaged because I wanted to know what was going to happen.  It was definitely a different type of story that had a lot of potential and wasn’t horrible.  It just wasn’t what I expected it to be.