The Girl with the Borrowed Wings by Rinsai Rossetti

The Girl With Borrowed Wings by Rinsai Rossetti
My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Publisher: Dial
Date Published: July 19th 2012
Genre: Young Adult Fiction

This book is unlike any other that I've read.

FIrst off, I can partially understand the main character. I say partially because I don't have an unloving father with crazy ideals or a timid mother. My mom's fierce, and my dad may misunderstand me, but he loves me anyways. The part I understand is the nothingness and everythingness that is Frenenqer. I understand the question that makes no sense--where are you from? Myself I have lived in England and India and Turkey and the United States and now I am living in South Korea. So I understand, how do you answer that simple yet completely unfathomable question?

I think I loved this book. Though I had a hard time dealing with her father. I consider myself a usually obedient person, but if I were ever faced with the problems Frenenqer had I would lay into some people and probably get into a physical fight over some things. And that is not me. So the amount of discipline that girl has is amazing. But I digress, I haven't even started from the beginning. How can you hope to make sense of my babble?

Frenenqer was created by her father. Not in the literal sense (well, I'm sure that had a hand in it too), but in the mind. He wanted a daughter. He wanted her to be his little project who was meek and obedient and his perfect experiment. And yet, Frenenqer is human. She's bound to have a personality separate from her father. But she has trouble breaking away from him.

She rescues a cat at the Animal Souk and the cat turns into a boy, or young man. Their first encounter is fleeting. But he comes back. And soon they develop a friendship as this young man/boy with no name. So Frenenqer gives him a name (which I can't remember, so read the book to find out). They travel and explore places and get closer and closer. The boy--let's call him 'S' for the moment, since his name starts with an 'S' and I can't remember his name.

So, S begins to have feelings for Frenenqer but she doesn't want to reciprocate. Why? Because of her father. And the niggling finger of his will poking her in the back time and again. It takes a year for her to break that finger and find herself. I got all sad at this point, with how messed up she is and her family is.

Like I said before, I partially understand Frenenqer, and maybe that has to do with why I like the book. It's so frustrating sometimes because you wouldn't believe how little books there are about people like me who are from a bit of everywhere. I'm no expat, and I only have three passports, not four like Frenenqer, but it's close enough to my reality that I'll take it.

A wonderful book all around for people who are from everywhere and nowhere, and for just the ordinary person who likes imaginary worlds with shape-shifters, some romance, and a tantalizing story.

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Synopsis:

A stunningly written tale of an isolated girl and the shape-shifting boy who shows her what freedom could be--if only she has the courage to take it

Controlled by her father and bound by desert, Frenenqer Paje’s life is tediously the same, until a small act of rebellion explodes her world and she meets a boy, but not just a boy--a Free person, a winged person, a shape-shifter. He has everything Frenenqer doesn’t. No family, no attachments, no rules. At night, he flies them to the far-flung places of their childhoods to retrace their pasts. But when the delicate balance of their friendship threatens to rupture into something more, Frenenqer must confront her isolation, her father, and her very sense of identity, breaking all the rules of her life to become free.



Kacii