Flutter by Gina Linko
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.Publishes in US: Oct 23rd 2012
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.
Source: Random House via Netgalley
I think Ms. Linko wrote a winner in Flutter. I am immediately drawn to the main character Emery. I like books with medical issues and also books with supernatural elements and this managed to take those two things and fuse them into something awesome.
We get to see right away that while it looks like a seizure from the outside her "condition" goes so much further than that. She is trying to convince scientist Dad that she loops through time, knowing things she couldn't possibly from the past and seeing parallel futures.
I loved getting to know Ash, the love interest. He is so mysterious and I can't help but wonder how he connects to the loops and what he is hiding. I love the moments of tenderness between the two, as well as the build up with their relationship.
Ms. Linko worked all of the plot elements together wonderfully and I really enjoyed reading how everything pieced together. Things that seem totally unrelated actually are moving the plot ahead and have significance.
The ending is nowhere what I expected, and at first, I was even unhappy with it. But the more I think about it, I like it more and more. It really is fitting and where the story was building up to with the small clues (and some not so small) could really be the most poetic and what the characters were meant for.
Have you or anyone you're close to ever had a seizure?
