[Review] The One Memory of Flora Banks - Emily Barr

Summary: You always remember your first kiss.

Flora remembers nothing else...

"I look at my hands. One of them says 'Flora, be brave'. I am Flora."

Flora has anterograde amnesia. She can't remember anything day-to-day: the joke her friend made, the instructions her parents gave her, how old she is.

Then she kisses someone she shouldn't have kissed - and the next day she remembers it. The first time she's remembered anything since she was ten.

But the boy is gone.

Desperate to hold onto the memory, she sets off to the Arctic to find him.

Why can she remember Drake? Could he be the key to everything else she's forgotten? (Pub Date: Jan 03, 2017)

Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.

A rare YA book that could be enjoyed by all ages.

Flora keeps forgetting things ever since she was ten but now she has one memory—that she kissed Drake, who was leaving to the Arctic but wanted to spend the night with her. When she loses her best friends and her parents go away to be with her bedridden brother in Paris, Flora has to keep it together secretly alone at home to prove she is no longer ten but seventeen years old. Her one memory is the proof she can do it.

I don't think this was romantic. To be honest, I was very bothered by the kissing scene. Until much later I realized how meaningful it was to Flora, I kept bashing Drake for taking advantage of her. In any case, this story is far from being about falling in love and using that power to overcome adversities. And that's what was most amazing about it.

Flora is able to, all by herself, get to the North of Norway and have a great adventure any able teenager would never have considered possible for them. Isn't that brilliant?

The narration was the other jewel. Yes, it was repetitive, and on purpose—and I'd vote for a bit more of editing there. The author relied mostly on stream of consciousness, and she had the hard work of making Flora sound a mix between a ten-year-old and teenager girl in love. In the end, this was a successful.

The same way I didn't appreciate what Drake did, I'm still bothered by her family, as well. Not sure that was how it could really happen, the explanations felt a little surreal. But Flora was so precious! I really admired her, even if there were some times I ended up screaming for her to just give up and call her parents. I'm glad she was so much stronger than me.

If you can go past the kissing scene in the beginning and won't mind Flora repeating herself over and over as she has to remember everything all the time, this is not a book you should miss. You should note this book may seem but it's really not heavy on romance. Perhaps, you'd best skip it if that's what you are looking for in your YA.

Rating: 4 out 5.