Title: The One Memory of Flora Banks
Author: Emily Barr
Pages: 311
Publisher: Penguin
Release date: 12th December 2016
Blurb from Goodreads:
Seventeen-year-old
Flora Banks has no short-term memory. Her mind resets itself several times a day,
and has since the age of ten, when the tumor that was removed from Flora's
brain took with it her ability to make new memories. That is, until she kisses
Drake, her best friend's boyfriend, the night before he leaves town.
Miraculously, this one memory breaks through Flora's fractured mind, and
sticks. Flora is convinced that Drake is responsible for restoring her memory
and making her whole again. So when an encouraging email from Drake suggests
she meet him on the other side of the world, Flora knows with certainty that
this is the first step toward reclaiming her life.
With little more than the words "be brave" inked into her skin, and written reminders of who she is and why her memory is so limited, Flora sets off on an impossible journey to Svalbard, Norway, the land of the midnight sun, determined to find Drake. But from the moment she arrives in the arctic, nothing is quite as it seems, and Flora must "be brave" if she is ever to learn the truth about herself, and to make it safely home.
My Review:
*I received
a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thanks to Penguin Random
House UK Children's and NetGalley*
Flora
Banks is a seventeen-year-old girl who has no short-term memory - the result of
a tumour that was removed when she was ten.
But then
she kisses Drake at his leaving party and remembers it.
Determined
that Drake is the key to restoring her memory, a series of events lead to Flora
embarking on a journey to Svalbard where Drake has moved.
Can Flora
find Drake with only her notebooks and the writing on her hands to help her?
Will
Flora's memory be restored?
Can she
have a normal life?
I have
mixed feelings about The One Memory of Flora Banks.
On the one
hand it was interesting to have a protagonist who couldn't remember everything
- talk about an unreliable main character.
However,
while I did like Flora and felt sorry for her, I found her naivety annoying at
times but it was understandable that she would be childlike given the memory
loss after the tumour.
There also
wasn't much of a plot - not much happened and things took longer to happen
because of Flora's memory loss.
While the
idea for this book was interesting and unique, I didn't connect with it.
Overall
this was an okay read.
