Review: Wild Beauty

Wild Beauty by Anna-Marie McLemore
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

I am thankful to have received an Advance Reader Copy of this book.

4.5 Stars

Anna-Marie McLemore's Wild Beauty is a lush book of magical realism in the style of Laura Esquivel, providing YA readers with a taste of writing that will hopefully draw them to the adult works of Esquivel, Allende and GarcÍa Márquez. A beautiful and moving novel with a fairytale-like quality, Wild Beauty tells us the story of the Nomeolvides family, all women (and for a reason) who are tied to a village called La Pradera both with their magic and the magic of the land and its history. Fel, a young man who seemingly miraculously is drawn forth from the land by the offerings of Estella and her cousins, is instrumental in changing the family's lives and future.

One of the features of this book that I loved was the complex sexuality and an androgynous/genderqueer character, which are a wonderful addition to the YA Hispanic magical realism oeuvre. (Accurately reflecting the mundane world as we know it.) The dual POV structure, giving us Estella's observations and Fel's initially fragmented recollections of his former life that build over the course of the book, was very useful in developing the narrative for the reader. This book evolves slowly, and some readers may be put off by its somewhat languorous pace as it lingers on aspects of the Nomeolvides' family flower magic, and the slowly evolving mystery of the Briar family. The payoff for the reader is a story with a haunting core, and the mistaken assumptions of more than a few characters, who only have pieces of the puzzle of the past, are an insightful depiction of how families bury their painful histories.

A lovely book that rewards the patient reader.



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