Review: FLOATING BOY AND THE GIRL WHO COULDN’T FLY by P.T. Jones
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.
ChiTeen, November 2014.
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.)
