The Strange Gift of Gwendolyn Golden: The Night Flyer's Handbook (The Night Flyer's Handbook, #1)

by Philippa Dowding

This morning, I woke up on the ceiling …

So begins the strange story of Gwendolyn Golden. One perfectly ordinary day for no apparent reason, she wakes up floating around her room like one of her little brother’s Batman balloons.

Puberty is weird enough. Everyone already thinks she’s an oddball with anger issues because her father vanished in a mysterious storm one night when she was six. Then there are the mean, false rumours people are spreading about her at school. On top of all that, now she’s a flying freak.

How can she tell her best friend or her mother? How can she live her life? After Gwendolyn almost meets disaster flying too high and too fast one night, help arrives from the most unexpected place. And stranger still? She’s not alone.

• ISBN10: 1459707354
• ISBN13: 9781459707351
• Publish Date: 3 April 2014 (first published 1 January 2014)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: CA
• Imprint: Dundurn Group Ltd
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 200
• Language: English
• URL: http://dundurn.com/books/strange_gift_gwendolyn_golden_0

Reviews

[KitsuneBae]

For a complete review, please visit Thoughts and Pens

My Review

Now, if you’ve ever been in Netgalley, you’d probably know that there are heaps and heaps of awesome e-ARCs goodness in there and it’s very hard to pick randomly. But The Strange Gift of Gwendolyn Golden caught my attention as its cover is very cute with that pair of legs dangling in the night. To satisfy my curiosity, I immediately read the summary and was excited to know that it was about a teenage girl discovering an extraordinary gift. You must have an idea by now what that strange gift would be just by looking at the cover. Anyway, who am I to resist that kind of temptation? I am a sucker for anything extraordinary, light and fun.

The first few chapters of the book were hilarious especially Gwen’s reaction when she discovered her gift. I must have been smiling while scrolling down my Adobe Reader. But then on the almost middle part of the book, things got slow and weren’t exciting anymore.

Another problem that I have with this book is that most of Gwen’s adventures aren’t that remarkable. It somehow failed to transport me into Wonderland. Or urged me to imagine myself having her gift.

It picked up again when Gwendolyn was struggling to control her gift and trying to hide it from everyone and most especially, facing the challenges of adolescence. I especially liked the scene where her anger got the best of her and scared the living daylights out of her long time crush. I also had fun imagining the Midnight Summer’s party that Gwen attended for having the gift.

Overall, this was a fun story to read especially if you like:
Reading about teenagers with strange gifts
Reading about a girl facing a new ability while trying to fit in in the normal world
Reading feel good children’s stories
Idling and just want to have a bit of a good laugh
Sharing an amusing story or two to your middle grade children (if you have one)

Note: The Source of this book is from NetGalley.