When 13-year-old Chase Ambrose wakes up in a hospital after four days in a coma, there's a woman weeping at his side. "Where am I?" he asks. "Who are these people?" Turns out the woman is his mother, and Chase has developed amnesia after falling off his roof. Once he's recovered from his more acute injuries, he's free to return to most of his normal activities. The trouble is, he has absolutely no idea what those activities were, or with whom he did them. He's told he was a football star. He knows who his best friends are because he finds a picture of them on his phone. But why do so many people cower and cringe when he walks by? Why does a girl dump frozen yogurt on his head? And why do his supposed buddies now seem like "the worst people [he] know[s]?"
As he navigates life post-accident, Chase is horrified to learn that he used to spend his days terrorizing less popular kids. But he also begins finding happiness and satisfaction in things his old self never would have considered: the video club, for instance, and his volunteer work at the assisted living facility. As he learns more about the kinds of things he used to do--blowing up pianos and worse--Chase wonders about the person he was--and the person he is now. Meanwhile, those around him also struggle to understand who the "real" Chase is.
Told in the alternating viewpoints of Chase and his classmates, Restart, by master middle-grade storyteller Gordon Korman (Schooled; Ungifted; The Hypnotist #1), explores what happens when a boy who doesn't even know he needs a second chance gets one. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor