teen fiction--action/adventure fantasy (aliens and superpowered cheerleaders) with a dash of romance, and incidental ethnicity (Mana initially identifies as mixed race/half-asian, one of her BFFs happens to be black). A terrific ride of a book that I finished in 4 and a half hours despite needing to wake up early the next morning. Though I see that other folks were disappointed in this book (among the complaints: not enough cheerleading, too sci-fi, "dull" dialogue), I actually really liked the characters and their snarky, geeky sarcasm.

Looking forward to more in this series. ( )

A sci-fi thriller with solid friendships, weird alien conspiracy stuff, and an engaging main character. This is fairly light and fluffy, and the plot jumped around a fair amount, but I think it could be a good fit for fans of [b:Dangerous|8585924|Dangerous|Shannon Hale|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1369672030s/8585924.jpg|13455292], Men in Black, or Stranger Things. It's a bit more silly, but not really in a bad way.

That said, a character tells another character to stop being "so spazzy," and I'm pretty disappointed that got by both the author and presumably an editor. If you weren't already familiar, the word spastic and its shortened forms are often used as slurs. It's perhaps more predominant in the UK than the US, but it's not unheard of here either. Here's a good blog post that breaks this down with resources. I'd much prefer ANY other word choice, particularly when there's no acknowledgement in the text about how problematic the word is. ( )

This book was provided to me as a digital review copy by the publisher, via Edelweiss.

Mana is your typical teenage girl: crushing on cute boys, not overly concerned about school, and cheering for the basketball team. It’s during a basketball game that Mana begins to think that maybe her world isn’t as normal as she thought. First, the boy she has a huge crush on is kidnapped right out of the bleachers, and then, when she tracks the kidnapper and cute boy to the girls’ locker room, she exhibits skills that she has never had before. After the basketball game, Mana discovers her house ransacked and her mother missing. Now she has to figure out how to find her mother, who to trust, and whether it’s okay to be maybe almost in love with her best guy friend.

Flying was a quick, easy read. It had some nice action scenes, and the interactions were pretty funny at times. I worried at first that this would just be a Buffy re-run, but was pleasantly surprised. Overall, I liked the characters and the story, but there is something about it that niggles at me. It feels that the author went a little overboard making Mana believably teenager-y. Seppie and Lyle came across as realistic, but Mana seems almost inane. This is possibly because the book is written from her point of view, and therefore we are privy to her thoughts, and honestly, who really knows what’s going on inside a teenager’s head?
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This book is about a sassy alien-hunting cheerleader Mana in Flying, the launch of a sparkling new YA Science Fiction series.