kthornette 's review for:

The One Memory of Flora Banks by Emily Barr

3.0

emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

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I recently purged books with a less than 3.5 star rating from my TBR, but I kept this one since I already had the audiobook borrowed and the plot seemed interesting enough. I can confirm that the plot is one of the story’s strength. The pacing of this story being pretty quick is also amazing with Barr’s short-paced writing style, especially since I think it can reflect Flora’s super short memory. 

 This story is a little hard to follow, and that actually works given Flora’s amnesia. If she can’t follow her life, how am I expected to? It’s pretty cool to watch her try to piece together fragments of her life on a ticking clock and have us as readers do it at the same time. 

 

The romance being the catalyst for a potential illness cure was kind of dumb. Believe me, I’m a sucker for a “love can cure all” plot (maybe I am a sap that way). However, the kiss with Drake was pretty lame? And he wasn’t all that interesting either. 

 

Something I would’ve done is play with Flora’s complicated family life. Maybe slight spoilers—but there’s a point where her family leaves her home alone to go to Paris (?) after she hits that checkpoint of remembering she’s 17 instead of 10. I would’ve spent that time trying to solve the mysteries in her family and maybe even scarring secrets about her life that she’s had no choice but to forget. Maybe she finds journal pages or things tucked away. Maybe memories start clicking and connecting and she has to write it down. Then every time she forgets it all, she just finds these scribbled notes that make no sense and tries to get it every single time. 

 

Also, I know Jacob wasn’t doing so well, but her parents leaving Flora at home alone was so fucking stupid lmao.