[Adapted from initial review on Goodreads.]
5 stars
This book is the best sort of magical realism - soft, slow-paced, rife with gorgeous imagery that is sometimes metaphor and sometimes real, and always means something. I wouldn't want every book I read to be like this, but as an occasional treat it is delightful.
I'm at a loss to say much about it, though, except that although it is a story about teens in love, it isn't a teens-fall-in-love romance: rather, it's about teens navigating emotional intimacy in a relationship that already exists, which I find considerably more compelling. Also, while this the emotional core of the book, it's not the whole of it.
Selling points: soft prose; magical realism in the best, most magical way; truly excellent imagery; Pakistani rep; Latina rep; trans rep (a boy and a woman, both major characters); lesbian rep (notably: homosexuality as a redeeming characteristic); love in many forms, notably a patient …
This book is the best sort of magical realism - soft, slow-paced, rife with gorgeous imagery that is sometimes metaphor and sometimes real, and always means something. I wouldn't want every book I read to be like this, but as an occasional treat it is delightful.
I'm at a loss to say much about it, though, except that although it is a story about teens in love, it isn't a teens-fall-in-love romance: rather, it's about teens navigating emotional intimacy in a relationship that already exists, which I find considerably more compelling. Also, while this the emotional core of the book, it's not the whole of it.
Selling points: soft prose; magical realism in the best, most magical way; truly excellent imagery; Pakistani rep; Latina rep; trans rep (a boy and a woman, both major characters); lesbian rep (notably: homosexuality as a redeeming characteristic); love in many forms, notably a patient and supportive mother.
Warnings: trauma, parental child abuse (past), self-harm; peer abuse; transmisia: in dialogue from antagonists, deadnaming, misgendering and threats of outing; in (very limited third person) narration, deadnaming and misgendering when referring to the past, considering a person's past and present selves as separate people; also the cover of my paperback edition has a very strange, unpleasant texture.
