It was a sweet story but I felt like it lacked something. The story didn't make sense and I didn't really liked the main character.

This fell flat. From the characters to the story pacing to the way the author ended the story. The explanation about the Floating Boy is unbelievable. This was made worse by the fact we aren’t properly given any explanation. But that doesn’t even matter because the characters are boring. There is nothing interesting about them at all. I couldn’t connect to them. Lastly, I was lost. Things were rushed with no adequate time to explain or reveal why things were happening. Are we just supposed to know?

I've had this book on my TBR for a while now because I downloaded it on Netgalley and never fit in the time to read it. Instead I found it on Hoopla recently (my love for that app never ends) and dove it.

This was a quick read. Floating Boy and the Girl Who Couldn't Fly is a simplistic contemporary fantasy. It opens on Mary (our narrator, and I just had to look up her name because it's used so rarely in the book) who is at a family reunion when she spots someone she's never seen before. A boy, who climbs a tree and starts floating up into the sky.

It's a hoax.

Or . . . is that only what they want her to think? Strange things start happening, spreading through and taking over her town, and Mary starts investigating it because . . . I don't know, because Floating Boy is hot?

I had a lot of problems with this book, mostly the content because it was pretty well-written. Sometimes Mary's POV was a little confusing, because her actions don't really match the tone and content of her thoughts. She's fourteen, and she's running all around independent and making mature, rational decisions while her thought process is like that of someone half her age.

Part of the subplot is that Mary has had problems with anxiety and depression, probably stemming from pressure at school, and she's still struggling with that. I love books where mental illness is not the only plot, just part of who a character is. However, Mary vehemently resists medical help with her anxiety/depression (which are apparently so bad that she mentions several times that her friends and family are on "suicide watch" and seems to look down on them for being worried about her?). She refers to all medication as "zombie pills" and there's never any point where she realizes that medication actually is the answer for a lot of people and that it can be a good option. I can't stand YA books that look down on medication like that, when someone young and needing help could read it and assume they shouldn't consider that option, or think that everyone will judge them for it.

Mary loves to judge people. She looks down on her family. She looks down on her friends. Mary is one of those girls who isn't like other girls. She needs to explain to other people who Godzilla is, because she's the only one she knows who has ever seen or heard of Godzilla.

Excuse me what.

I wish we'd gotten to know more about Floating Boy and his past and all, because obviously he was the most interesting part of the book. Unfortunately the explanation for everything was so convoluted that I'm still not quite sure what the answer to all of the mysteries was? It didn't make very much sense to me, and I didn't care to try to go back and understand.

I can't say that I recommend this book. There are so many better options out there to read, that are full of amazing characters, and are more satisfying. This one just really missed the mark.

(I received aree copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.)

Things Mary doesn't want to fall into: the river, high school, her mother's life.
Things Mary does kind of want to fall into: love, the sky.
This is the story of a girl who sees a boy float away one fine day. This is the story of the girl
who reaches up for that boy with her hand and with her heart. This is the story of a girl who
takes on the army to save a town, who goes toe-to-toe with a mad scientist, who has to fight a plague to save her family. This is the story of a girl who would give anything to get to babysit her baby brother one more time. If she could just find him.
It's all up in the air for now, though, and falling fast...

Potential...it is a word often used for novels that fall down in delivery after so much expectation. This one is the perfect example of that. Just look at that gorgeous cover - I was excited to read it based just on that (yes, I was judging a book by its cover!) and then add the wonderful title and I just felt like this was gonna be a great ride...

...and it just kinda missed the mark on all the big important factors for me. The one thing that makes a novel for me are characters. If you have great characters, then I can allow for a bit of poor dialogue or pacing issues. But I really didn't connect with Mary. At all. The minor characters added some respite but that's all I got from that. Also, I need the storytelling - either by the author or the 1st person narrator - to be addictive and easy to read. Tis was whimsical and, for me, a little all over the place. Made it hard for me to get drawn into Mary's story. The final thing is a satisfying ending...and I sort of got that but I still felt let down, like there was going to b some final reveal t astounded me but it was just "Oh, i'm done..."

I won't say this is a "bad" book - just didn't work for me at all...


Paul
ARH