Hey guys! It's Trina and today
I'm making a video inspired by the book
The One Memory of Flora Banks by Emily Barr.
This video is being sponsored by Penguin Teen
and they sent me the copy of this book
early in order for me to give an honest
review of it. I'm going to be telling you
what this book is about and what my
review of it is, and then I'm going to
get into sharing the one memory that I
never want to forget. This book actually
was released in the UK in January but it
is coming out in the United States on
May 2nd, so this book will be out by the
time you are seeing this video. This is a
YA contemporary story with kind of a
mystery edge to it about a young girl
named Flora Banks who when she was 10
years old doctors discovered a tumor on
her brain. The procedure that removed the
tumor also caused her to have a form of
amnesia and she can no longer create
memories, so her only memories that she
has are from when she was 10 years old.
She still remembers who she is, who her
parents are, how to do certain things but
she's never been able to make a new
memory since then and now she is 17. One
night she's at a party and she kisses
her best friend's boyfriend and when she
wakes up the next morning she can
remember it. So it's the first new thing
that she's been able to remember in
seven years and Flora thinks that maybe
her memory is finally starting to
improve. Personally, I rated this book
three-and-a-half stars and what that
means on my rating scale is I consider
three stars to be right in the middle. It
is average because I can't rate a book
zero stars, or at least I don't, so between 1
and 5, 3 is the midpoint and 3.5 is
slightly above average. So that basically
just means I had more positive thoughts
about this book than negative thoughts. A
couple of things that I struggled with
in this book were the writing style. It is
very simplistic and very repetitive,
especially at first, and that is
something that I found myself - I would
just stop while reading and start to
like reword the sentences in my head to
be something that I found more appealing.
But honestly I found that the writing
style was actually a character trait of
Flora. It reflects her mental state and
as the book goes on and she gains a
little bit more confidence in herself
and believes that she is healing, you can
see that the writing does grow stronger
and it stops being as choppy and it
stops being quite as repetitive. Although
it is still fairly repetitive because
she has amnesia and she's constantly
like saying things that we already know
about but she's forgotten them. Another
thing that I struggled with it first was
that the idea of kissing this boy has
fixed Flora's memory. Flora definitely
says, "he's cured me. If I can just be with
him again I will start to remember
everything." This is an idea that I think
is probably harmful because it will set
up an unrealistic expectation in your
head, especially if it deals with
something like a mental illness or an
injury or something. Thinking that a love
interest is going to fix that, I can see
how this is a harmful concept and so I
want to mention this because it is
included on the book jacket summary so
you may already know that about this
book. I actually tagged every single time
in the book where it credits this guy
with healing her memory. It was about
eighteen mentions in the book, so if
that's something that you've seen in the
book summary and you're concerned about,
yes it is present, yes it might kind of
bother you, but in the end I don't think
the book reinforces that idea. It
definitely shows that that is not the
case. To talk about the things that I
enjoyed the entire way through, Flora is
a really unreliable narrator and there
are times when like you learn
information that she's known for days
but she didn't know she already knew it. And so
another character will be like, "yeah I told
you that last week," and so it kind of
changes how you perceive things. I did
enjoy the unreliable narrator aspect of
this book because it left a lot of room for surprises.
And then even though I didn't always
love the writing style, even though I came
to appreciate it, I did think that the
writing imparted a really good sense of
urgency and mystery and I just really
wanted to know what was going on. Like,
about a third of the way through the
book I got incredibly gripped by it and
I had to stay up way too late reading.
And when I have books that really just
kidnap me like that, that is part of
the reading experience that I really
highly value. So there was a lot that I
liked about it but really that writing
style and the idea of his love fixing
her and she just being so like
instalove attached to him, those were kind of
the things that I didn't like but I did
enjoy this book a lot more than I
initially thought that I would. So that's
the information about this book and my
review of it, and inspired by the idea of
this book where she only has this one
memory that she's been able to make,
I'm going to talk to you guys about the
one memory that I would never want to
forget. So I'm actually going to cut now
to me and my husband together talking to
you guys about some of our favorite memories.
This is my husband. He's been in
a couple of videos with me before. In the
book Flora Banks, that character was 10
years old when she got amnesia so she
remembered everything before she was 10
so in our scenarios were also going to
act as if we can remember everything
before we were 10 years old. So we still
remember like who our families are, who
we are, and stuff like that. So after 10
what is a memory that we most cherish?
Which, we're a lot older than Flora Banks
was [laughs] so we would be missing like
two-thirds of our life pretty much, so
that's a bit more of a challenge.
Initially, I thought about I wanted to
remember something to do about my mother
because she passed away when I was 12
years old and that has really influenced
and impacted my life. Looking at it a
little bit more practically, like, I don't
know that I would want to relive finding
that out over and over and then
forgetting all the things that I've
learned since then that have made me who
I am, so if I am going to be like
practical about this one memory I can
keep with me I would choose something
doing with my husband because from now
on if I wake up every morning I would
want to remember him, know who he is, so I
would want to remember a day that we
spent together. And I think we have the
same memory and we're just going to kind
of talk about it. We went to Hawaii on
our honeymoon, which was five years ago.
We went to the island of Oahu and I
really wanted to go kayaking, and you
were supposed to get in your kayak in
this canal and then paddle out to the
part where it goes out into the ocean
and then go to this island that was kind
of off the coast. And when we get to the
canal where the little training video
told us this is where you get in at, well
we didn't realize that like the tide was
much lower, but I get in the canoe and
then he gets in the canoe and we just
sink to the bottom [laughs]. Like there's only like
this much water. Enough for the canoe
to float and one person to float but not
[laughing] both of us. So we're like, well I
guess we'll just get out and drag the
canoe through the water, but then there
are all these little crabs [laughs]
running around in the water and I flipped out! [laughing]
[Man:] Yeah pretty much. I ended up pulling her along.
Um. And you know, as you can see I have glasses.
The glasses got like fogged up but
also like waterlogged and I couldn't see anything.
[Trina:] Like I'm in the - in the kayak
sitting there and he's pulling it on a
rope, trudging through this canal because
I'm terrified of all these crabs. [laughing]
And then we get to the end point where it's
supposed to meet up with the beach and
it's literally a sand bar because the
water is not high enough, so we had to
get out anyway and then just like get in
again against the waves and we got
knocked out once and then we get in the
water and we see floating jellyfish that
are dead all around us and I - I just flip
out and we're in the middle of the ocean.
We made it to our Island.
[Man:] It was a bird sanctuary so a lot of people were going
around taking pictures and looking at
birds and stuff but at this point I
can't see anything and I was trying to
take pictures I think on my camera phone
at the time and it had gotten like
fogged up or something so the pictures weren't - [Trina:] The lens was foggy.
[Man:] Yeah. So the pictures weren't
turning out good, we were already tired
and stressed out just from the first half.
[Trina:] We wanted to go to another Beach
that you can only get to by kayak but as
soon as we got done with that island I was
like terrified. We'd already fallen out
once, there were all these jellyfish
around and I was just like, 'I'm going to
fall out of this kayak and have the
jellyfish just drag me under. I'm
never going to see anybody ever again.'
Like I just gotten so terrified [laughing] but I got
like in the zone and I was just like
paddling and we made it back [laughing] to shore.
So there's this little wheel thing that
you attach to your kayak so you can
drag it up and down that street to get
it from the rental place to the beach
and so he didn't put the wheel thing
on in the right position and it make it
like five times harder to pull. And I
just remember [laughing] on our way back he
was struggling pulling this kayak
behind us and he was like
huffing and just like struggling with it. [laughing]
[Man:] I'm the big bad man so - [Trina:] He can't admit it.
[Man:] I can't admit that I'm struggling, I have to
just, you know hey, it's my brand-new wife,
I gotta show her I'm strong.
[Trina:] Like I could tell that something was wrong but neither
one of us really realized what the
problem was until we got back and saw
somebody else had strapped their wheels
onto their kayak right and then he did it and he was like oh
man that was like five times easier! [laughing]
So it was a complete bust but after that,
even though we cut our day of kayaking
really short, there was this little shave
ice place right next to it and so we
went in and I remember after this terrible
day sitting on a bench like in a parking
lot in Hawaii, us eating shave ice
together and that - I can like very
vividly remember that memory and
thinking like, 'it's all going to be okay.
If we can get through this, it's going to
be okay,' which is a really reassuring
thought to have when you're newly
married because it's a big transition in your life.
[Man:] Yep. [Trina:] That's a memory that I
feel like we often reminisce on.
The carrying me down the canal with the crabs. [laughing]
It was just one that we frequently still
talk about. I thought it'd be fun to
share because that would be a good
memory to where if I woke up tomorrow and
couldn't remember anything else at least I would
remember him, know that we are married,
and that yes he is supposed to be in my
house, you know? So that's one of our favorite
memories inspired by the premise that's
going on in Flora Banks and I hope that
this video has told you a little bit
about the book and helped you decide if
you would like this one or not and told
you a little bit about us, I guess? [laughing]
If anyone is looking forward to this book I
would love to hear that, or if you've
already read it we can definitely talk
more about it down below, and if you guys
want to share with me in the comments
what is one memory that you would never
want to forget I would love to hear that.
Thank you so much for watching and I'll
see you in the comments. Bye!
[music only]
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