Books › The Girl Who Could Fly (Piper McCloud #1)
The Girl Who Could Fly (Piper McCloud #1)
336 pages
A folksy, high-flying adventure that champions the weird, the wonderful, and the rebellious spirit of kids who refuse to be grounded.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like stepping out of a sunlit, down-home country farm and into the sterile, chilling halls of a secret government facility, only to break out again with a triumphant shout. It blends the whimsical charm of a classic underdog story with the tense, propulsive energy of a sci-fi thriller. The narrative voice is delightfully folksy, grounding the extraordinary premise in a warm, relatable earnestness before pulling the rug out with genuinely sinister institutional threats. It is a story that celebrates the messy, beautiful reality of being different. Readers who love secret academies, found families of misfit kids, and plucky heroines who outsmart oppressive adults will devour this soaring, spirited adventure.
- Mood
- whimsical
- adventurous
- uplifting
- tense
- Tone
- folksy
- earnest
- spirited
- slightly sinister
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- embracing individuality · dangers of conformity · found family · rebellion against authority
- The writing
- Conversational and charmingly folksy, blending down-home country idioms with sharp, accessible action.
- The arc
- Moves from the innocent joy of discovery to the chilling realization of institutional control, culminating in a triumphant, high-stakes rebellion.
- Who it's for
- Middle-grade readers who root for plucky, irrepressible underdogs and love the trope of a secret school for extraordinary kids.
Content notes
- institutional confinement
- child separation from parents
- bullying
About the book
You can't keep a good girl down...unless you use the proper methods. Piper McCloud can fly. Just like that. Easy as pie. Sure, she hasn't mastered reverse propulsion and her loops are kind of sloppy, but she's real good at loop-the-loops. Problem is, the good folk of Lowland County are afraid of Piper. And her ma is at her wit's end. So it seems only fitting that she leave her parents' farm to attend a top-secret, maximum-security school for kids with exceptional abilities.
School is great at first with a bunch of new friends whose skills range from super-strength to super-genius. (Plus all the homemade apple pie she can eat!) But Piper is special, even among the special. And there are consequences. Consequences too dire to talk about. Too crazy to consider. And too dangerous to ignore.
At turns exhilarating and terrifying, Victoria Forester's debut novel is an unforgettable story of defiance and courage about an irrepressible heroine who can, who will, who must...fly.
Description from Open Library.
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