I LOVED this book. 

My favourite type of books are those that flow easily and allow me to read without having to push myself to do so. 
This was one of them!

Flora Banks is a 17 year old girl who has Anterograde Amnesia, this means that she is unable to create short term memories after an event/trauma. Flora retains memories from her earlier years but every day after that hasn't occurred (to Flora anyway!) 

One day she's kissed by a boy but miraculously remembers this day after day, this alone grabbed me, I needed to know more, will she recover? Will she start to make new memories? I had to know, I must know more! 

It's a really interesting read and I loved every second of it.

What can I say about this book?? Well I think I enjoyed it and it made me realise what having retrograde amnesia is like, but my goodness I read the same sentence a million times! I would have liked to have known more about what happened to Agi an what happened to Flora after agreeing to meet Dr Epstein in Paris (maybe they'll be a second book). 

Overall I did enjoy the book and found Flora wonderfully endearing, I would recommend this read even if it does seem to go round in circles

Flora Banks has anterograde amnesia. She can remember everything that happened before her brain was damaged, but nothing that's taken place afterwards. That means she doesn't recognize people she's recently met, she doesn't remember conversations or events and she doesn't know what she's done several hours earlier, let alone anything she was part of weeks or months ago. There are instructions written by her parents, so Flora knows what's wrong with her and what she's supposed to do. Going over her notes is what she usually does when she thinks she needs to remember.
 
When Flora gets her first kiss she still knows about it the next day and the next. Her parents have to go away and leave her with Paige, her best friend. The boy who kisses her is Drake, Paige's ex-boyfriend who just broke up with her because he's moving abroad. Because Flora can remember him she thinks he's special. If he's the one who can make her remember she has to see him again. However, how can she follow him when she doesn't remember anything she's just seen or done? Flora has betrayed Paige. Will her best friend still be there for her after Flora kissed Drake or is she on her own?
 
The One Memory of Flora Banks is a book about an incredible girl. Flora is seventeen years old, but in her mind she's still a child. She isn't helpless though, instead she's creative and inventive. She finds a system that helps her to remember who to trust and who to stay away from. She writes everything down on any kind of surface, no matter if it's paper or her arms and hands. She keeps scribbling to make herself remember the important parts of her life. Except for Drake, she does remember him, which makes him special as that has never happened before. Flora's mind might be broken in some ways, but in others it works in an amazing way. Flora is strong and adventurous and I loved her from the start.
 
The One Memory of Flora Banks is a beautifully written story. I loved how Emily Barr makes Flora repeat things to herself without making the story itself repetitive. Instead she uses it to make her story stronger in an amazing skillful way. Flora has a tattoo that says Flora Be Brave, which is exactly what she does over and over again. Flora is one of the bravest main characters I've ever read about and she's an example for many. I can't stress how extraordinary she is and think The One Memory of Flora Banks is an absolute must-read. Flora is a main character that should be honored and her story is absolutely brilliant.

I read The One Memory of Flora Banks right after I had finished another book that dealt with memory loss. Maybe I should not have done that since now I could not help stop myself comparing both books even though they dealt with two completely different types of memory loss.
I have to say I don’t think I have read a book before that is similar to this one. Flora suffers from amnesia and a couple of times a day her mind resets itself. Therefore she still sees herself as a young child since those are the last real memories she has. But then one day she kisses a boy and she remembers. And this moment is a start of an adventure for Flora.

There were a couple of things about this book that I did not like that much about this book. One of the things was that it was pretty repetitive a lot of the time. I get that the main character suffered from amnesia but some parts of the book were a copy and paste of events that had happened before. Not even a word had changed and that is something that I could not deal with.  I do understand that somethings had to be repeated since Flora forgot everything but the author could have done it in a more adventurous way I guess. Another reason why this book was not really for me was because I just could not wrap my head around it that a kiss from the boy is the only thing she remembered in years and that after that happened nothing else changed in regards to her mental health.

One of the only things that I truly enjoyed about this book was the adventure. Flora embarked on an adventure that took her to some really wonderful places. And the people she met along the way were fun enough to read about. But I think I would have enjoyed it more if her adventure had not been all about finding the boy she kissed. I believe that this book could have done so much better if it hadn’t centered so much around romance.

Overall this book was just not for me. I can see why some people enjoy it but for me it was just too unrealistic in a lot of ways. And a book that tackles a concept like amnesia should not be unrealistic in my opinion.

This is a book that shouldn’t work. But it does so brilliantly. The One Memory of Flora Banks tells the story of Flora, a girl with no recent memory and who astonishingly is the sole narrator. As she faces the world and herself anew every few hours the reader quickly becomes as one with Flora and her confusion, despair and growth.

As a result of treatment for a brain tumour at the age of ten Flora Banks has anterograde amnesia. The seven years following the operation are a void to her although she remembers much of the first decade of her life, especially her parents, her best friend, Paige and her brother Jacob. However each day she’s startled by her older self, family and friends as she wakes to fear what is happening, what has happened. No wonder she has ‘Flora, be brave’ written on one of her hands. 

Writing is one form of survival for Flora as she seeks to navigate her disjointed life and for her aid, she covers her hands and arms with words to remind her of her life, events, people. She also keeps a detailed notebook throughout the days which becomes vital for her sanity and further notes direct her to the book. 

This is Flora’s life until one day something amazing occurs – she kisses a boy on the beach and remembers it!  The boy is called Drake and also Paige’s boyfriend. This pivotal event transforms Flora’s life and she will do anything to chase her memory of  Drake – even to the extent of travelling to the Artic alone in search of him. Her one and only memory in seven years. She’s sure he holds the key to her future self.

Memory forms not only ourselves and our lives but is also critical in storytelling with a beginning, a middle and an end. The One Memory of Flora Banks is unique in that the past, present and future become the now and along with Flora we face each new moment with a tangible sense of fear and anticipation. Her bewilderment and turmoil are brilliantly conveyed and the reader immediately mirrors the unpleasant surreal sensation of her existence. Life becomes akin to a waking dream, at times nightmarish, at times exquisitely beautiful. Whilst Flora’s life in Penzance is written with a more concrete grounding in reality, her time in Spitsbergen gains a stunning dreamlike quality whilst her new-found friends remind her about themselves and herself, helping her, losing her as she chases Drake further.

Unlike Flora, the reader has one major advantage – memory! With this ability, the brave, tenacious and surprisingly whimsical nature of Flora shines through and the remote location in the frozen depths of the Artic takes prominence, the bleak white landscape a metaphor of Flora’s blank spaces where her memories should reside. Gradually a more complete picture of her life is created, how her parents dealt with her illness, how her brother wanted her to have a more free, less protected life. His belief in her strength and ability to do anything is the driving force that carries her closer to Drake. But will she ever find him? Will it help her recover her memory?

This is a book that lived with me through the days even when not reading and to which I couldn’t wait to return to every evening. Its magical enchanted feel fluttered like lilting music over me, the absolute unknown a welcome break from formulaic writing.

Why on earth it is marketed under the YA (Young Adult) category beggars belief. This is truly a disservice to a superb book which would be loved by readers of all ages, so please don’t be put off by this pigeonholing.  

This is a wonderful unexpected unusual book which will delight you with its story, its originality and its deft and clever execution; I really can’t recommend this highly enough.

If there is one thing I can say about The One Memory of Flora Banks (gosh, that's a mouthful!) it's that the book is definitely unique and different, that's for sure. I kind of vacillate between liking this book a lot because of its uniqueness and not really digging it.  The basic premise of the book is that we get Flora Banks who had a tumor in her brain when she was 10 and upon removing it, she lost her ability to make new memories. So, she can bathe and cloth herself and do basic things, and has memories from before she was ten, but she cannot form new ones. She knows her parents and those closes to her but that's about it. In other words, she can meet the new kid at school one day and not remember them five hours later. She has to write herself daily reminders on her hand about who her friends are and what is going on in her day-to-day life/routine. So, if something happens that day she needs to remember, she writes it on her hand or in this notebook she keeps which is kind of like her bible. She reads it every morning and it reminds her that she's not ten anymore, what happened, who her friends are, etc.

The book takes off when she kisses her best friend's boyfriend and the next day remembers it. This is the first and only new event she has ever remembered. Then, the boyfriend starts emailing her and to make a long story short, after he moves away, she goes on an adventure to find him. She seriously leaves home with her notebook and some clothes and flies across the country to find the boy that made her remember because she believes he is somehow the key to unlock her memory.

The book just moved kind of slow for me and though I didn't dislike Flora, there was still a part of me that was a bit disconnected from her. This whole time I'm reading, I'm getting this feeling that the parents are hiding something from her, and Flora does believe they're keeping a secret. At the end of the book, when it was revealed, it just felt a bit like a letdown to me. I don't know. This book was good, just not great. The only thing that really kept me reading was the secret aspect because I was hoping/imagining it as being something jaw dropping. It ended up being kind of like--oh, okay.

I imagine though other contemporary ya fans may like this book even more than I did, so if it sounds like your thing, I encourage you to give it a shot.

What a fabulous opening. It really made me want to read the book to find out how Flora got into that situation. I was left guessing all the way through, much like Flora herself. A very satisfying read.

Wow. I wasn't quite sure where this book was taking me and I certainly didn't expect that journey! At first I was a little apprehensive as 17 year olds in love aren't really my thing but boy, this was a story like no other. Not your typical love story and not your typical ending.

I really fell in love with the character Flora and the book has left me with a warm fuzzy feeling inside. 

I read it in less than 24 hours because I literally didn't want to forget a thing and felt the need to keep up the momentum..... just like Flora

Great book. Such a shame it's over so soon. Hopefully I'll read it again one day

I decided to read The One Memory Of Flora Banks because I thought the premise was rather interesting. Imagine only remembering the bare minimum of your life? Imagine then, that you're finally able to remember something for the first time since your were a kid. This is essentially the main drive of the book. Protagonist Flora Banks has never been able to remember anything beyond her childhood years, but one kiss changes all of that. 

The book was well-written, and I enjoyed that at times you do find yourself getting confused - it takes you a little while to realise that Flora has just forgotten everything she was thinking about as you're reading it. I quite enjoyed it overall, although I feel that the book could have used a bit more of a resolution at the end.

This book is classed as YA but I honestly couldn't find any difference in it to an adult fiction book.
Emily Barr is a brilliant author so I trusted it would be a good read.
As it says above Flora has anterograde amnesia after having a brain tumour removed when she was ten years old,she is now seventeen. Flora is helped in life by her best friend Paige but when she betrays Paige their friendship is over. 

Flora's mum wraps her in cotton wool and does not let her lead a normal life but when her son needs his parents they have to leave their daughter at home in the care of Paige. Of course, Flora forgets that Paige no longer wants to be her friend and forgets to tell her parents, so just how will Flora cope on her own?
Flora has to write everything down to remind herself what to do in all different situations. On her hand is written, FLORA BE BRAVE and this girl must be one of the bravest characters I have met in a book.
As Flora takes it upon herself to follow a boy to the Artic I never believed she would get there in one piece. As she meets new people along her journey who don't know of her medical condition I worried about her and when turning the page I was concerned what trials Flora would face next.

This was a book I really enjoyed, yes some parts could be a bit repetitive but that's what happens with memory loss and it didn't annoy me,it was part of this story. Flora was a lovely character, one you just want to hug and make everything okay for her. 
It's about love and loss and trying to work out just how this old world and the people in it work.
Surprisingly this is the fourth book in a row I have read with memory loss as it's theme. This is the second I have written a review for so two more to come.

The initial idea that someone can only remember things from before they turned 10, and then recalled one event that had just happened was an interesting premise for a book, so I was looking forward to reading this. To start with, you think you know what might happen, but as the story quite literally unfolds, you realise that nothing is quite what it seems, and it becomes really difficult to work out who is telling the truth and what is actually real in Flora's life. She is an amazing character - the reader is left feeling that if Flora can do what she does, then almost anything is possible.
Aimed at a reader of around 13+, I would recommend it.

I have already bought these books for my libraries, I loved the first half but found myself skipping ahead to get to the end to see if Flora would regain her memory and really to figure out what was happening faster!

Thank you for the opportunity to review this title.  I was intrigued by the premise, but ultimately the construction just didn't keep my interest.  :-(

I loved and lived this book. I felt the reader was immediately drawn into the life of Flora banks. The repetition was hypnotic and really worked to focus the story. This was unlike any book i have read before and kept me completely entranced throughout. There are enough twists to the tale to add real dimension and leave the ending well worth waiting for, I would certainly look for more books by this author.

The one memory of Flora Banks could definitely be classed as a page-turner. Flora is a genuinely lovely character, one who is bound to captivate anyone who reads this book. 
The book captured my attention from the first page with the first few lines:
“I am at the top of a hill, and although I know I have done something terrible I have no idea what it is.
A minute or an hour ago I knew, but it has vanished from my mind, and I didn’t have time to write it down so now it is lost. I know that I need to stay away, but I don’t know what I am hiding from.”
Flora Banks is 17 years old and has anterograde amnesia. When she was ten she had a brain tumour and when the doctors removed it they took her ability to retain memories from that time onwards. Flora has to write herself notes about important things so she doesn’t forget them. She writes these notes mostly on her hands. 
In chapter one Paige is at her friend’s house at a going away party for Paige’s boyfriend Drake. “I look at my hand. Party, it tells me, in thick black letters.”
“I imagine I dressed for what I thought a party was like. I stand out as the person who has got it wrong.
I look at my hand. It says I am 17. I look down at myself again. I look like a teenager, but I don’t feel like one.” 
Initially I didn’t like Paige, for reasons that will become clear when reading the book, but I ended up becoming fond of her. “Paige is my best friend. I am on sure ground with Paige. I met her for the first time when we were four years old and starting school…I know Paige, and when I look at her, I am surprised to see that she is an adult.”
“Paige is beautiful, with long black hair that is thick and slightly curly, and creamy skin, and cheeks that dimple when she smiles. She looks like a china doll. “
Paige has a bit too much alcohol and goes out for some fresh air. “I should not be out on my own. I Shouldn’t stand in the middle of roads. I have only just been allowed to start crossing rounds without a grown-up…I am ten years old. I don’t know why I am in a grownup’s body. I hate it and I want to go home.”
Drake come out to check on her and they sit on the beech talking. “We stare at the words together. Flora, be brave, he says, reading the other hand. ‘I love the words on your hands. Does it work? Do they help you remember?”
Whilst they are talking Drake tells Flora that he and Paige have split up because there was not much point in staying together when he was moving to Svalbard. After that he kisses her. 
“The thing is’ says Drake, ‘I can say this, because, like, what the hell? You won’t remember anyway. I would be like, in the pub with you and Paige and looking at you, all like pretty and blonde and different from every other girl in the world, and wondering what it would be like to be with you.”
When Flora gets home she writes down what happened with Drake so she can remember it. “I read it, but I don’t need to because I can remember it.” Flora is very excited by this because it is the first new memory she has been able to make since the age of ten. “I have to spend my life with him because he makes my memory work.”
Paige sees one of Flora’s notes and discovers what happened with Drake. “And you know what else? I’ve been the only looking out for you for years and years, you know. I’ve taken you out when your mum would have kept you wrapped in cotton wool at home…Every time you forgot where you are I help you. My mum always hated me doing it, she said I shouldn’t have to be your carer. But sure have my boyfriend.”
Paige tells her that she had promised Flora’s mother she would do her a favour but she wasn’t going to do it anymore as they were no longer friends. 
When Flora gets home she find out her parents had asked Paige to look after her whilst they went to visit Flora’s brother Jacob in Paris. Jacob was sick. Flora decides not to tell her parents that she and Paige aren’t speaking. 
I liked Paige’s brother and father but I really disliked her mother even though I understood her reasons for being controlling and over-protective.
“My father is funny and lovely. At work he is an accountant but when the doors are closed at home he wears patterned jumpers that he knits for himself. His hair sticks up in the air, when mum hasn’t patted it down. He says funny things. He would do anything for me, I know that, and I would do anything for him, if I were capable of doing anything. Everything about him fills me with relief when I see him. He is my home.” 
Jacob was probably my favourite character in the book, after Flora. “I know Jacob. He is the person I love most in the world. He is bigger than me. He used to pick me up and carry me around, and he let me sit on his lap to watch television, and I have a very clear memory of him allowing me to paint his toenails.”
Whilst her parents are away Flora decides to go to the Arctic to find Drake with some interesting consequences.
This was the best YA book I have read so far this year and Flora’s rules to live by are pretty sound advice.

Well what a treat this book was. Totally loved Flora such a unique character in every way, the book was devoured in just one sitting as I couldn't put it down! The story is told just from Floras point of view and had you constantly guessing if what she was seeing/hearing/remembering could be actually trusted??...I thought it had good pace and kept my interest throughout. Loved seeing her learn about herself and friends and family members and the way it all unfolded was just beautifully written. Must read book!!

Too clichéd for me - it really annoyed me and I struggled to finish.