The Girl Who Could Fly

by Victoria Forester

It starts out intriguing, with an inquisitive farm girl named Piper, who is born with the ability to float (I kept thinking of Princess Hyacinth) and teaches herself to fly. Her parents disapprove and the community is shocked when they find out. They decide it's best to send Piper to a secret institution for kids with special abilities. Where she meets children of all sorts (mind-reading, super strength, control over plants, etc) and gets involved in a government conspiracy. I thought this would be to learn from or manipulate the kids' abilities, but turns out it is to force them to conform instead. I liked Piper's character- someone else described this book as 'Little House on the Prairie meets X-Men' but she really reminded me of Anne of Green Gables. You'd think the story would get more intense when Piper gets to the special school but that's when it quickly went downhill. The telling got a lot more careless and suddenly I had no investment in continuing. I glanced at some of the reviews on amzn and it looks like I wouldn't have enjoyed where the story was going, anyway.

Borrowed from the public library. A better read on this theme would be Black and Blue Magic!

Abandoned        329 pages, 2008