Girls Don't Fly

Girls Don't Fly
By Kristen Chandler
Viking, 2011. 300 pgs. Young Adult

High school senior Myra--after getting dumped by her perfect boyfriend and having her super smart older sister living back home after she got pregnant out of wedlock and enduring a lifetime of doing everything for her family--decides to try to win a scholarship to study in the Galapagos Islands over the summer. However, her ex-boyfriend is also competing and is messing with her head, and family obligations threaten to ruin everything. And yet, now that she's started learning about the birds on the Galapagos, and with some encouragement from the grad student helping them prepare for the scholarship competition, Myra just might learn to fly herself.

I have mixed feelings about this one. I really liked seeing Myra's progress and how she decides to give herself a future. At the same time, I had a really hard time enjoying the romance angle: she's seventeen and in high school; he's working on a PhD, and that just was a little too much for me to handle, even though it's a sweet romance. I just couldn't get past that enough to fully enjoy the book.

AE