Mia has just woken up in the hospital with no knowledge of who she is. It’s not until she looks at her phone that she even knows her name is Mia. The nurses tell her about her head injury and the staples that she got to repair it, but they can’t tell her how she got the injury. They can’t tell her what her last name is, or her birthday, or her address. They can’t tell her why she was wearing a yellow Prada cocktail dress with a cape. All she has is her phone, and that can only tell her so much. She apparently deletes her texts after she reads them. But she still has Instagram, and there she can see that she is #Mia4Realz and has recently spent time on a yacht called The Good Life.
She gets out of the hospital, and the only thing she can think to do to try to remember who she may be is to go to the places where her last few photos were taken. A trip to the yacht, to the beach, to her boyfriend’s house leaves her with more questions than answers, especially about that boyfriend. She has a key to his front door, but is met inside by Max, a neuroscientist who moonlights as a house sitter. Because her boyfriend JP clearly has a lot of money and has jetted off to Switzerland for a few days. As disappointed as Mia is that JP isn’t home, she is happy that Max is concerned about her and is willing to try to help her figure out who she is.
A decent night’s sleep and a good cup of coffee the next morning, and Mia is ready to set off to find out more about herself She thinks she may be the owner of a high-end dating app, matching millionaire men with smart, beautiful women. She doesn’t know why she doesn’t have any emergency contacts listed in her phone or why the last person she’d called, Crystal, just yelled at her and hung up. But she does find small clues that help to piece together a little bit of who she was.
Although, she is starting to wonder how much she really wants to know. When she tries to access her bank account, she just gets a message that she needs to go to a physical location and speak to someone. And when she does, she finds out that she’s written checks for more money than she has in her account. She doesn’t let Max know about that part, as she’s promised to pay him for his help after an incident at his research lab has left him without a job or a girlfriend.
The more Mia finds out about herself, the more she wonders at the person she had been before her head injury. And the more she thinks she might like this new Mia better. But will her past be able to stay behind her, or will it catch up in dangerous or punitive ways?
Siri, Who Am I? is the new comic novel from debut author Sam Tschida, and she manages to breathe new life into the amnesia story trope. Playful and light-hearted, this novel is a look at who we have become in this era of Insta-everything and filtered photos that we pretend is real life. It takes a look at the darkness we all hide behind our hashtags and asks what the truth really is. The question is: do we have enough courage to see ourselves for who we really are?
I liked Siri, Who Am I?, but I also had to work to suspend my disbelief that she would have been allowed to just leave the hospital without knowing her name or address, having someone come pick her up, or reporting her injury to the police. If you can set that aside, then it’s such a fun journey to go on. The more you meet Mia (and the more she meets herself), you find out she is smart, resourceful, determined, and fearless, and it’s great to see her find the happy ending she deserves.
Egalleys for Siri, Who Am I? were provided by Quirk Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.
