I won't be able to leave a review for this book; I requested it in a past lifetime of my NetGalley use (about ten years ago!) and it no longer fits with my reading interests. If I ever do end up reading it I'll come back and update this!

Flutter
by Gina Linko
Pub Date: 23 Oct 2012
read courtesy of Netgalley.com

Note: I, too, received this as a galley copy to review many years ago, but I just got around to posting about it.

This was a quick read, well, a compelling read, because I was pulled along by the plot, the mystery of Emery's illness, and the connections all of the characters had. Time travel always messes with my head (think Back to the Future), so I had fun trying to piece the story together at the same time Emery was. Then... and I agree with other reviewers on this, too ... I had my WTF moment at the end. If I hadn't read the print version and instead read the Netgalley digital version, I might have missed the author's note that she likes to pursue "What if...?". Only this note, that the author was purporting that alternative inevitabilities are her passion, allowed me to understand why Linko surprised her readers with this twist.

Overall, this was good, interesting YA writing. Yet, though I understand why Linko couldn't have built up to this ending earlier, it really did come out of nowhere with the minor exception of a conversation Emery and Ash had late in the story.

This book would be hard to classify as scifi, because it turns into fantasy. Recommend this book to readers who like the book The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold or the movie The Sixth Sense.

Caution: SPOILER ALERTS:

1. Where did Dala go when she fluttered with Emery? If the past was an afterlife, then did Emery kill Dala somehow?
2. How could Emery take people/things from the present back and forth to the afterlife? Did they temporarily die, too?
3. Why could Emery see her grandmother, Ash's brother, her mom, but not Ash's mom in the afterlife?
4. In hindsight, it makes sense that Emery couldn't see Ash's father in the afterlife, but that still doesn't explain why she didn't see his mother.

So sorry, I had reviewed this a long time ago near the book's release but I had forgotten to paste my review here as well.

Here is the review:

Time traveling? HECK YEAH! That’s awesome! Love time traveling stories! I always want to see how authors work around that paradox of potentially messing up the future, the effect of the self, and then how this then affects the other people.
This story had me really going.

Until I came to the ending.

That’s not to say Gina Linko has bad writing. She doesn’t. She is a very capable writer that can do great description and emotion. Her framing technique of using Emery’s dreams as a portal to her future visions was an interesting way to break up the narrative and move the plot forward. Although the plot did get pretty stagnant in the middle where I thought nothing was happening.

I wasn’t totally taken by the romance because while she is heads over heels for him rather quickly, they took a while to get into the relationship. They are kinda mushy and I’m not into that sweet romance. They took up the majority of the page time and I kept going, “okay, yeah, but what about that OTHER stuff?”

The ending now, that was a huge mind trip. Biggest WTF ever. It totally came out of left field and didn’t seem really thought out thoroughly. Geh. And, also. I thought we were gonna have some Oedipus Rex moment there for a bit. LOL. I think this book would totally have been awesome to cross that barrier. Kekeke.

Maybe a good pick for those more interested in the romance component of the book.

I don't really have much to say about Flutter but I did say I would review it (six years ago) so here I am. Basically, it's a really bad book. It was written in the (fairly) early days on YA, and you can tell. The plot is incredibly basic, and there is far too much focus on the romance for a science fiction book. I was promised a book about time travel, and instead I got some romance drama with a bit of paranormal thrown in. It was boring. I didn't like it.