That’s Not My Name

Gr 9 Up–A teen wakes up on the side of an Oregon country road; she has brown hair, green eyes, is covered in dirt and blood, and doesn’t remember a thing—not even her name. A patrol cop finds her and takes her to a small local precinct where a man named Wayne shows up, calling her Mary and claiming to be her father, with legal documents and family photos as proof. The first-person perspective then shifts to Drew, who is printing out flyers of his missing girlfriend, Lola, who has brown hair and green eyes—and readers will think they know where this one is going. The perspective shifts every few chapters, as each character deals with their situation—Mary in the remote cabin trying to remember anything about her life, while Drew lives with the stigma of being the prime suspect in Lola’s disappearance. Lally’s debut is a page-turning read set over only a few days as Mary becomes increasingly unsettled by the cracks emerging in Wayne’s story and Drew, his cousin Max, and Lola’s best friend, Autumn, launch their own investigation to find Lola, with the story lines intersecting in a heart-pounding conclusion. A note: Wayne focuses on Mary wearing “appropriate” clothes (e.g., no V-necks); there is no sexual assault. Most characters read white; Drew was adopted by his fathers (one is white, one is Guatemalan American) as a toddler.