Review Detail

Exploring the fascinating world--both speculative and philosopical--of time travel and all of it's varying possibilities, Flutter manages to wrap up the imagination with its fragile yet powerful main character and strong secondary character portrayals woven throughout an intriguing storyline. Emery is a red-headed 17-year-old plagued with unexplained yet lifelong seizure-like episodes that leave her with a weakened body and strange new memories. She has come to believe these memories are in fact from her visits to a different time. She is now confined to a hospital, undergoing 'treatment' and scientific study by a team that includes her widowed father. As he has grown more and more callous towards her needs and speculations about what is happening to her, she finally abandons any hope of convincing him and instead takes matters into her own hands. Armed with the clues she's accumulated from her episodes and driven by the knowledge that her body is breaking down and death is before her, she determines to escape and piece together the answers she needs to solve her mysteries and possibly stop the episodes, before her body (and time) runs out.

Emery possesses the mental strength that I so adore in a female main character, and all of it in spite of her incredible physical weakness. The realization that her best friend doesn't really believe that she's time traveling adds a kind of hopelessness that makes her unstoppable, and as she journeys to the place she believes she is being led, I could feel within myself the hope and adventure and desperation all bubbling within her heart and mind. The characters she encounters in the Michigan town she has traced, even when briefly encountered, are clearly written, interesting, and easy to picture. Their small-town hospitality and caring--including the immediately enchanting and thoroughly masculine Ash--combined with Emery's fish-out-of-water state, wove a story I could not pull myself away from.

At first I was not sure about this story or Emery, but as I got to know her I felt more and more of a connection to her, in part I think because I moved out/left when I was 17 and have had many precarious yet exhilarating, solitary journeys of my own. The plot happily caught me off guard over and over again, and kept me guessing as to the link between Emery and Ash and the truth behind her episodes. I thought I wanted certain things to happen, but as the story unfolded, each new piece of the puzzle fit perfectly, until the finale, which I felt was perfectly executed. A surprisingly immersing read.