Review: Flutter by Gina Linko

Flutter by Gina Linko

• Pub. Date: October 23, 2012
• Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers
• Pages: 352
• Amazon/Goodreads

All Emery Land wants is to be like any other 17-year-old—to go to school, hang out with her friends, and just be normal. But for as long as she can remember, she’s suffered from seizures. And in recent years they’ve consumed her life. To Emery they’re much more than seizures, she calls them loops—moments when she travels through wormholes back and forth in time and to a mysterious town. The loops are taking their toll on her physically. So she practically lives in the hospital where her scientist father and an ever-growing team of doctors monitor her every move. They’re extremely interested in the data they collect when Emery seizes. It appears that she’s tapping into parts of the brain typically left untouched by normal human beings.

Escaping from the hospital, Emery travels to Esperanza, the town from her loops on the upper peninsula of Michigan, where she meets Asher Clarke. Ash’s life is governed by his single-minded pursuit of performing good Samaritan acts to atone for the death of a loved one. His journey is very much entwined with Emery’s loops. 

Drawn together they must unravel their complicated connection before it’s too late.

First Line: It is bright.


Review: I don't think I had any real expectations for this book, but Flutter really surprised me. It captured my attention from the very beginning and held it all the way to the very end.

Seventeen year old Emery lives her life in a hospital, she has been having "loops" since she was little and as she became older it has become worse to where she can't even go on with day to day activities without looping (time traveling). The loops are slowly killing her and she knows it. When she loops she sometimes visits people from her past, she goes to the future and most of the time she meets up with a little boy. At first things are vague but eventually her time spent with the little boy becomes more and more vivid to the point where she runs away from the hospital and her father who looks at her as a lab rat to experiment on and ventures off to find out more about the little boy and what he wants from her.

Hmm where to really start, I really thought I knew what was going on the entire time but boy was I wrong about everything literally. And I loved it! This book was not predictable at all, I would have never guessed what was really up with her loops and no way did I even imagine for it to the end the way that it did. After I was finished reading I was walking around just a little shocked because I did not see it coming, the ending came out of left field. It was sad and beautiful all at once.

As for the two main characters Emery and Ash they both had depth to them, and I liked the fact that it wasn't all centered around Emery. Ash also had some messed up things going on in his life that made him and easily believable character. I loved the chemistry between the two and the fact that it took time for their feelings to develop for each other.

Overall Flutter was a wonderful read and I really am looking forward to see what else Gina Linko writes in the future.