Floating Boy and the Girl Who Couldn't Fly | P.T. Jones | Reviewed by Anjali

Floating Boy and the Girl Who Couldn't Fly | P.T. Jones | Reviewed by Anjali

• Sunday 10 August 2014

Okay, so I've written and re-written this review like a million times and it's just not working for me. Why is it always so hard to write a review for a book you didn't enjoy? Sigh. So I apologise in advance if nothing makes sense... 

Strange things start happening after Mary sees Floating Boy for the first time at a family birthday party. The papers all dismissed the phenomenon of a boy flying (ahem, floating), but Mary knows better. When she finds her little brother floating on the ceiling of their home, she knows she has to find Floating Boy and get some answers. Soon the whole town is infected with some sort of floating-disease...everyone except Mary. Then her brother goes missing, and Mary and her floating friends (including Floating Boy) have to go and rescue him from a mad scientist. Oh, and there are cows. Lots of floating cows. 

The description of this book on Good Reads (because goodness knows my description was not good at all), says: 

"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. . . ."

It sounds like a fun concept, right? People floating around? That's what I thought to, but I didn't really like it at all. The main character, Mary, just wasn't that great, nor was she a character you could hate (you kinda want one or the either, right? To make you feel something, anything). She was just meh; an I-don't-care-what-happens-to-her type character. Floating Boy was called 'Floating Boy' for the entire book basically, which was frustrating and it made me feel like he didn't have an identity. I know that your name doesn't define you, but by golly it helps. Other things that I didn't enjoy include how quickly Mary just accepted the fact that floating around in a flying-like manner was fine and dandy; how the whole scientific reasons for the floating was just confusing (if the reason was just 'magic' then I would totally be okay with that...); Mary's voice in the story, as it's told in first person, just wasn't very engaging and while the first few papers I thought it would be a good book...I found it took a turn for the worse about a chapter in. 

While I'm writing all these bad things, there were some good points. I really liked the concept of a floating boy; the idea reminded me of Peter Pan. I did feel for the little brother, and liked him, but I think that that's about it. 

So would I recommend it? Not so much, no. But the title was nifty and the cover was pretty...so that serves me right, really, for judging before reading. 

This book was provided for me for an honest review by NetGalley and Diamond Book Distributors. 

This review was written by regular reviewer Anjali, get to know her here. 
Image from Good Reads.