Review: A Constellation of Roses

A Constellation of Roses by Miranda Asebedo
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A Constellation of Roses is author Miranda Asebedo's second YA novel and one of the most affecting novels I've read in recent months. Equal parts coming of age story and redemption story, it gives us a young woman, Trix McCabe, who is struggling in every possible way. Living hand to mouth while her addict mother prostitutes herself, Trix has grown up living in hotel rooms and using her mysterious gift of stealing things without being caught to help them survive. Eventually, Trix is removed from her mother's care by social services, and she bounces around in foster homes while her mother completes drug rehab. Once she is reunified with her mother, they have one good year, living above a Chinese restaurant where her mother works and where Trix is treated like family, and then, after a simple kitchen mishap, it all turns south again. Soon Trix is back in care, running away, and finally getting caught and given a plea deal choice of going to juvenile detention (that would be jail) or going to live with the newly discovered family of her father, a father she never knew. She will have to finish high school there and work part-time in the family's tea shop and bakery. Trix, being pragmatic, takes the plea. Her social worker, Ms. Troy, takes her to meet her Aunt Mia, her great aunt, Auntie (easily the most humorous character in the novel), and her cousin, Ember. And so her journey to joining the McCabe women begins.

Trix quickly finds out that all McCabe women have a gift, a sort of quiet magic. (This is deftly done magical realism.) She quickly realizes what hers is- the ability to steal or do things unseen. But the McCabe family's real gift is loving-kindness, and it changes Trix's life in ways nothing in her seventeen-year struggle has. Allowing her to have space, and find her place with their support, Trix's life seems to be on a new path until the past rears up and makes her question how much a person can or should change from the habits of their familiar past. Her poignant feelings of not belonging, of doubt, her continual fears of rejection and feelings of alienation plague her. How will she conquer her deepest fears? You know the McCabe women will be there for her.

This book is beautifully written, made me cry near the end (happy tears, really!) and Trix's story and struggles feel so authentic. After years of working in the child welfare system, I can say that the passages in which Trix's PTSD, and her feelings of desperation that make her want to run, feel visceral and real. How I wish I could have offered Never-Lonely Lemon pie to some of the teens I knew.

The audiobook is beautifully narrated by Katherine Littrell.

Content Warnings: child abuse, addiction, suicide. Please note that this is a book with positive outcomes about recovering one's life.

"May your darkest chapters be short, and your story long." ~ Miranda Asebedo


I received a Digital Review Copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

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