Flyaway by Helen Landalf

Summary Provided by Goodreads:

Fifteen-year-old Stevie Calhoun is used to taking care of herself. But one night, her mom, who works as an exotic dancer in a downtown Seattle nightclub, never comes home.

That’s the night Stevie’s life turns upside down.

It’s the night that kicks off an extraordinary summer: the summer Stevie has to stay with her annoyingly perfect Aunt Mindy; the summer she learns to care for injured and abandoned birds; the summer she gets to know Alan, the meanest guy in high school.

 
But most of all, it’s the summer she finds out the truth about Mom.

FLYAWAY is the story of a teen girl’s struggle to hold on to what she’s always believed, even as her world spins out of control.

My Thoughts:

While searching the new YA titles on Netgalley, I came across Flyaway and was instantly intrigued and after reading it, I have nothing but good things to say about it! Flyaway is about a 15 year old girl named Stevie. Her mother is a dancer at a strip club and Stevie spends most of her time by herself. She ignores all of the negative things about her mom and looks up to her. It isn’t until her mom doesn’t come home for days, and her Aunt Mindy takes her back to her house, that Stevie starts to question all she knows about her mother and their life together.

I really loved Stevie. I thought she was a wonderful character and I enjoyed getting to know her. It was really hard for her to come to terms with her mother’s drug issue and I felt for her. I wanted her to be able to accept her mother’s issues and be able to move on from that. I wanted her to become a family with her Aunt and I wanted her to get to know Alan. My favorite parts of the book was when she and Alan were working at the bird sanctuary together. Stevie was someone that I was rooting for throughout the entire story.

Flyaway will leave you with hope and a smile on your face and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a good story! Also, you might not know this at first, but Flyaway is a perfect fitting title for this book!  

Flyaway is set to be released December 19, 2011.