It's the mid-1990s, and fifteen year-old Guernsey schoolgirls, Renée and Flo, are not really meant to be friends. Thoughtful, introspective and studious Flo couldn't be more different to ambitious, extroverted and sexually curious Renée. But Renée and Flo are united by loneliness and their dysfunctional families, and an intense bond is formed. Although there are obstacles to their friendship (namely Flo's jealous ex-best friend and Renée's growing infatuation with Flo's brother), fifteen is an age where anything can happen, where life stretches out before you, and when every betrayal feels like the end of the world. For Renée and Flo it is the time of their lives.
With graphic content and some scenes of a sexual nature, PAPER AEROPLANES is a gritty, poignant, often laugh-out-loud funny and powerful novel. It is an unforgettable snapshot of small-town adolescence and the heart-stopping power of female friendship.
My thoughts
I loved this book completely. Dawn O'Porter really captures perfectly what it was like to be a teenager in the 1990s and writes about it in a brilliant albeit at times cringingly accurate way.
The story tells you a lot about friendship and the way in which it can change you and the way you act as a teenager. I loved loved love the time setting of this book. It is set in the 1990s before mobile phones, before the Internet and it was brilliant to be reminded of that very different way in which people reacted with each other.
I loved Flo mostly because of all the crap she deals with on a day to day basis having to bring up her younger sister because her mother doesn't seem care or want to do it herself. It was interesting to see the way in which her relationship with her original best friend changed the way in which she acted. I loved seeing how she changed over the story because she met Renee who depsite her hard edge she has a really soft side which I loved and I enjoyed getting underneath her skin and seeing the whys and wherefores of why she became the person she puts out there to the rest of the world.
I love the relationship between Flo and Renee completely. I loved the way in which it develops as the story goes on and how it changed both of them for the better and made them stronger individually.
I loved loved loved the end
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