The Floating Boy and the Girl Who Couldn't Fly by P. T. Jones is a cleverly written book for children ages twelve & up. The dialogue has just the right amount of snarkiness.

It is well done for the time when teens are not always comfortable with their peers & environment. It has touches of crush/romance as well as science fiction.

"She laughs, thinking she can embarrass me more than I can her. Oh, Mother."

It's a fun story to read & moves fast. Because it kept my interest, I gave it four stars.

"The kids form a circle around the tree. They're full of righteous sugar & corn syrup, & they jump & throw their arms in the air like they're about to kill Piggy. Lord of the Flies is the one summer book I got to, all right?"

I received a complimentary copy from ChiTeen & NetGalley. That did not change my opinion for this review. ( )

READ IN ENGLISH

Read all my reviews on http://urlphantomhive.booklikes.com

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review, thank you!

I'll be honest with you: I wanted to read the book just because of the intriguing title. Unfortunately the rest of the book was less interesting.

The story starts at a birthday party where, all of a sudden, a boy starts floating (or more like flying). First it is said to be an hoax, until all children that were on the party start floating themselves. The adults for some reason only get flu-like symptoms. And there the special snowflake, Mary (sometimes called Mare, as if that is a better name?), who's the girl who couldn't fly (on her own at least).

What follows is a weird and confusing story. I don't know what to think of it. It felt the whole time like this book should be speaking to me on some higher metaphorical level, but if it did, I didn't get it. Which just left the weird, completely unrealistic (but not in a good way) story. And that wasn't enough to hold my interest, even though this isn't a big book. I was curious however to find out what caused the flying. One moment they say engineered protein, the next it's a virus. (And a flu-shot is all nice, but won't prevent you from getting viruses that cause flu-like symptoms but aren't the flu! A scientist should know these things!).

All in all, I thought the title was amazing, but the story couldn't live up to it. It wasn't really original (besides the floating part it was just another story), and I'm just not sure what to think of it. Perhaps this book just wasn't for me, and other people will probably like it more, I guess... ( )

This book made me smile. So much. Which might be weird, because it has some pretty dark moments. There's the floating boy, of course, who is at first debunked as an urban legend before Mary can prove that she saw him, that she isn't crazy, and if she doesn't do something, her whole town will be in trouble. There's the creepy balloon man, the contagion, the small town hysteria, the scary zealots, the asshole jocks and the absent parents. But there's also the moments of love and friendship and FLOATING BOY AND THE GIRL WHO COULDN'T FLY is a debut YA effort from team P.T. Jones. I'd say it's a triumph.

When Mary first sees Floating Boy at a birthday party for her baby cousin, she comes home to find out that the news has already pegged the incident as mistaken identity -- floating boy is nothing more than a gingerbread-man-shaped balloon. But then Mary's brother starts floating. And before she knows it, she's busy tying him to his bed and trying to get Floating Boy to tell him why kids all over town are starting to float and the adults are running ridiculous fevers...and running to the ER.

With her bestie Liv and an unlikely team of Allies, it's soon up to Mary and Floating Boy to confront the reality of the floating crisis. While some of the local teens are more than happy to fly around and party, Mary is the only one of them who has managed to stay grounded. Which means she's the only one who can save her brother when the crisis goes from something that kind of sucks to something that hits home.

FLOATING BOY AND THE GIRL WHO COULDN'T FLY isn't the novel I thought it would be. It's better. It's more compelling than I could have imagined. With elements of mystery, suspense, romance, mad science and magic realism this is a book that probably has something for everybody. The lyric prose and snarky-loveable protagonist are just the icing on the cake. This is a title to watch this fall. Pick it up. Read it. Hug it. I dare you to resist. (Just kidding. Don't resist. Just read.) ( )