Reviewed: Notes to Self

I purchased my copy from the Kindle store

For quite some time I have subscribed to the daily email from Ereader News Today. Thanks to this fabulous resource, I slowly was building a free ebook library, but was quick to realize I had a difficult time reading them on my laptop, and my cheap tablet had the Kindle app, but the battery sucked and it was quite finicky. So I stocked away ebooks in the Amazon Cloud and patiently waited for the day I would purchase a Kindle.

Then my happy day arrived! Last month I finally got a Kindle Fire! Yay! With all my free ebooks in the Cloud, I knew I would be stocked for a bit with ebooks on my Kindle. Notes to Self by Avery Sawyer was one of my collected free ebooks in the Cloud. When I downloaded it, I knew that it was a book I was super interested in reading... so I decided to christen my Kindle Fire with Notes to Self. I was very happy that I did.

From Goodreads:

"Two climbed up. Two fell down. 

One woke up.

In the aftermath of a traumatic brain injury, Robin Saunders has to relearn who she is and find out what happened the night everything changed."

Robin is a young teen who wakes up in the hospital with little memory of why she is there. Stung with the realization that she fell from an amusement park ride in the middle of the night, she struggles to uncover the rest of the story. There is something pulling at her, urging her to remember why she climbed a shaky amusement park ride with her friend, Emily, and how exactly they fell. Robin also had to figure out who she was. After waking, her memory is spotty- she awoke to the challenge of amnesia and now she was fighting for her memory, while Emily is fighting for her life. 

With the encouragement of her therapist, Robin begins to write notes to herself. Robin looks for clues to who she is everywhere- in her room, on her social networking sites, in her locker, at school, and in her friend, Reno. As she begins to piece together who she is and what happened that night, Robin discovers a new side of herself which was buried below the surface before her accident. But what about Emily? Will she wake up like Robin did? Why did Emily insist upon climbing that stupid ride anyway? Will her classmates ever stop staring?

My thoughts:

I was immediately sucked in to this story and to Robin's plight.  Raw and emotional from the get-go, Sawyer packs a punch. A fairly short read, I gobbled this book up quickly. I could not stop turning to pages to find out what would happen next. Desperately seeking answers to the mystery of that night and the mystery of Robin herself, I was certainly on the edge of my seat while reading.

Robin was a character that I quite liked. She was multidimensional and I thoroughly enjoyed discovering who she is along with her. The concept of writing notes to herself, about such simple things like "how to shower" was also just so interesting to me. You don't realize how much of your life is on auto-pilot until you're forced to think about it. Notes to Self reminded me how fragile life is, and not to take it for granted. 

This book absolutely touched me. It was just such a powerful and moving story. I HIGHLY recommend this book. Be prepared for an emotionally charged book that will leave you open and raw at the close.

On a side note:

There were a few grammatical/spelling errors, which I know for some can be quite difficult. 

Thankfully, they were few and far between.

write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow