Review by New York Times Review
McLemore's second novel is such a lush, surprising fable, you half expect birds to fly out of its pages. But magic realism is more than special effects. "When the Moon Was Ours" is about identity - the love story of Miel, a girl whose wrist sprouts roses, and Sam, a transgender boy who paints moons and sets the canvases in trees. McLemore uses the supernatural to remind us that the body's need to speak its truth is primal and profound, and that the connection between two people is no more anyone's business than why the dish ran away with the spoon. Sam lives as a boy, inspired by his Pakistani grandmother's stories about the bacha posh custom, in which girls are raised as males to protect sisters - and he fears he will be expected revert to his "correct" gender one day. Miel's fantastical history sparks its own trauma. Still, she cares for him in a label-obliterating way: "It was his body. It was his to name. And he was under this roof of gold and darkness with a girl who would learn to call him whatever he named himself." In an author's note, McLemore talks about her transgender husband, and you realize the novel is a love letter. There's a reason Miel is so moved by Sam's lunar paintings in trees: He's hanging the moon. STILL LIFE WITH TORNADO By A. S. King 295 pp. Dutton, $17.99. (Young adult; ages 14 and up) A 16-year-old girl named Sara hands her art teacher a blank piece of paper and says, "I've lost the will to participate." It's a funny, deadpan moment - but she means it. Sara spends much of King's ninth novel skipping school and wandering around Philadelphia in an existential funk. She rides buses, tails a homeless artist she believes is living an "original" life and considers changing her name to Umbrella. In a beautifully matter-of-fact use of the supernatural that brings Haruki Murakami to mind, Sara also meets herself at the ages of 10, 23 and 40, and circles closer to some stark truths about her family. "Still Life With Tornado" is a moving, unapologetically strange, skillfully constructed novel about how sometimes the most broken home on the block is the one where the parents are still pretending their marriage works. (Spike Jonze should buy the movie rights immediately.) King's insights about parenting, denial and abuse are so raw and true, grown-ups may want to avert their eyes. But she is a witty, humane writer. Sara at 40 is the most well adjusted, so a happy ending always floats just ahead of our heroine, like a firefly. Read this book, whatever your age. You may find it's the exact shape and size of the hole in your heart. SCYTHE By Neal Shusterman 433 pp. Simon & Schuster, $17.99. (Young adult; ages 14 and up) Shusterman, who has written 36 books and won a National Book Award, writes prose with the sort of spring in its step that says: "Stand back. I know what I'm doing." "Scythe" is about a utopia just beginning to unravel. It's the deep future. A cloud computer known as the Thunderhead controls virtually all of mankind's affairs. Scientists have triumphed over disease and even death, and an elite league of reapers has been commissioned to kill to slow population growth. (What could go wrong?) Two teenagers, Citra and Rowan, are drafted as apprentices. Citra learns at the knee of a humane woman named Scythe Curie; Rowan tries not to sell his soul to a renegade psychopath who engineers mass reapings. Only one apprentice can become a scythe, so they're forced to compete horrifically, even as they contend with the capital-F feelings that teenagers in peril always have for one another. Shusterman shuffles his most intriguing character offstage too early, and the novel's dark humor sometimes makes it hard to lose yourself in the romance and peril. Still, "Scythe" is full of sly plot twists and absorbing set pieces. The novel is the first in a planned series, but one emerging theme has a nice sting to it: Maybe we should give computers the keys to what's left of the kingdom, because human beings can't be trusted. A SHADOW BRIGHT AND BURNING By Jessica Cluess 407 pp. Random House, $17.99. (Young adult; ages 14 and up) As secret talents go, Henrietta Howell's is a showstopper: When she gets furious, she bursts into flames. During the course of Cluess's gripping, graceful debut novel, Henrietta will have much to get fiery about. There's the classist, sexist paternalism of early-Victorian-era London; the gall of certain handsome young sorcerer types; and the fact that even though she can't control her powers and has chosen to name her wand Porridge, everyone seems convinced that she alone can defeat the horrifying beings known as the Ancients. Cluess can create an unnerving monster, like R'hlem the Skinless Man, and write a crackling battle scene. But she also swims deep in the thoughts of her heroine, who's simultaneously defiant and unsure of herself. Is it clear that Cluess adores the Harry Potter series and "Jane Eyre"? Yes. So do you. So does everyone. What matters is that her voice is her own. Her missteps are small and few - a slightly chaotic sequence, a sudden left turn concerning one of Henrietta's suitors. "A Shadow Bright and Burning" delivers on the promise of its title. This is a novel that gives off light and heat. LABYRINTH LOST By Zoraida Córdova 324 pp. Sourcebooks Fire. $17.99. (Young adult; ages 14 and up) Alex Mortiz dreads her coming-of-age party because all her relatives are going to be there, including the dead ones. "Labyrinth Lost," which inaugurates Córdova's new fantasy series, is a richly Latin American, giddily exciting novel about a Brooklyn girl navigating two terrifying dominions: a Dante-esque land of shape-shifters called Los Lagos, and adolescence. Alex promises to be a transcendent witch, or bruja, but she believes her magic is tainted and responsible for her father's disappearance. At her party, she renounces her powers with a disastrous spell, whereupon her family vanishes, and she must travel, via portal, to Los Lagos on a rescue mission. Córdova mixes nicely observed details ("Crazy Uncle Julio brought a lonely pink balloon, and it's already started to sag in the corner") with action-movie choreography. And she gives Alex two entirely different love interests: a cocky male mercenary, Nova, and a daring, devoted female friend, Rishi. It's a welcome bit of geometry at a time when bisexual readers are hungering for representation. "Labyrinth Lost" introduces a daunting amount of mythology, and readers may get overwhelmed. There's a line that nails the feeling exactly: "I'm dizzy, but I don't want to leave." THE DIABOLIC By S. J. Kincaid 407 pp. Simon & Schuster, $17.99. (Young adult; ages 14 and up) You start loving Kincaid's second science fiction novel on Page 2 when you learn that its protagonist is named Nemesis, and you love it even more when Nemesis gets a genetically modified dog called Deadly. Nemesis is not "relatable" in the Hollywood sense, which is to say she is not kooky and conflicted. She's a ruthless, predatory lab creation engineered to protect a senator's daughter, Sidonia. The senator outrages the emperor by refusing to kowtow to his backward religion. The emperor strikes back by summoning Sidonia to the royal space station, where he intends to hold her hostage, or worse. The senator's wife decides that Nemesis will impersonate Sidonia instead: "The emperor wishes me to send my innocent little lamb to the slaughter. No. I'll send him my anaconda." Watching Nemesis cut a violent swath through the vile, duplicitous aristocracy is a joy; watching her gradually become "real" and "human," less so. (We don't want Nemesis to be touchy-feely any more than we want the Velveteen Rabbit to be a killing machine.) But the tension is nearly always high, the characters memorable, and the bond between Nemesis and Sidonia genuinely moving. "Diabolic," itself a genetic experiment blending "I, Claudius" and "The Terminator," appeals to both our better and more devious angels. JEFF GILES'S debut Y.A. novel, "The Edge of Everything," will be published in January.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [November 13, 2016]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Sam and Miel have always been inseparable. Pakistani Samir and his mother moved to town first, painting ornamental moons and carrying secrets, but Miel appeared out of the water tower, with roses growing out of her wrists. As they grow, their friendship deepens into something more; after all, it's Miel who's the keeper of Sam's secret, who realizes he used to be different, and who understands why he is drawn to bacha posh, a Pakistani practice where families without sons allow a daughter to live as a boy. But Sam and Miel have caught the eye of the four Bonner sisters, whom people say are witches, and Miel knows their attention could destroy everything. This is a careful, close look not only at gender identity but at what it is to possess a body for Sam, of course, but also for Miel (whose roses are viewed with suspicion) and for the almost mythical, red-haired Bonner girls as well. Love, family history, and things unsaid are forces to be reckoned with: Miel's guardian cures lovesickness, and people believe Miel's roses cast a love spell. With luminous prose infused with Latino folklore and magical realism, this mixes fairy-tale ingredients with the elegance of a love story, with all of it rooted in a deeply real sense of humanity. Lovely, necessary, and true.--Reagan, Maggie Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
As she did in The Weight of Feathers, McElmore blends magical elements with a culturally vibrant cast to create a haunting modern fairy tale. At its heart are two best friends turned lovers: Miel, a girl rumored to be born of a water tower who grows roses from her forearms, and Sam who, in keeping with the Pakistani tradition of bacha posh, has been raised as a boy, and now has no interest in living as anything but. Magic, myth, and legend are woven into the fabric of their town, and Miel and Sam's relationship is complicated when the four Bonner sisters, who are rumored to be witches, come to believe that Miel's roses will help restore their influence over the town's boys. Lush, reverential language remains a hallmark of McElmore's work, and while the story's momentum can suffer as a result, readers interested in gender identity and the pull of family and history will find this to be an engrossing exploration of these and other powerful themes. Ages 12-up. Agent: Taylor Martindale Kean, Full Circle Literary. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up-Love bests every opponent in this surreal exploration of familial bonds and sexual identity. Teens Sam and Miel have been best friends for years, ever since Miel appeared, sodden and terrified, amid the flooded ground around an overturned water tower. As their friendship unfolds into romance, long-repressed secrets and rumors clamor for air. Sam is reticent and obsessed with painting moons on paper and metal. Miel and her guardian, Aracely, are thought to be witches-Miel because roses grow beautifully and painfully out of her wrist one at a time, and Aracely because she cures lovelorn townspeople with potions she creates. Until recently, the four haughty, gorgeous Bonner sisters held mysterious sway over the hearts of the town's young men. Now that their power has gone, they believe Miel's roses are the fix they need, and they have no scruples about using physical cruelty or blackmail to get what they want. Amid the ordinariness of the small-town setting, McLemore winds arabesques of magical realism. This imbues the narrative with the feel of a centuries-old fairy tale, while the theme of sexual identity gives it the utmost relevance. Some teens might be put off by the frequent descriptions of egg and pumpkin varieties and their associated shapes, colors, and uses. VERDICT Readers who stick with this novel will be rewarded with a love story that is as endearingly old-fashioned as it is modern and as fantastical as it is real.-Jennifer Prince, Buncombe County Public Libraries, NC © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
If Jeffrey Eugenidess characters were to walk out of his books and into Laura Esquivels, you might get When the Moon Was Ours, the trappings of which add more verisimilitude than found in your average work of magical realism. In an unnamed town that could be in the American Southwest or somewhere in Latin America, seven young adults stand out from the otherwise vanilla, ordinary-seeming residents: Sam (short for Samir), a boy who is different because he is Pakistani; Miel, who scares people because roses grow out of her wrist; Aracely, a curandera who is loved when she helps townspeople get over heartbreak but reviled as a witch when they dont need her; and the four Bonner sisters, or las gringas bonitas, who have a strange hold over any boy in town they wish to possessexcept Sam. Everyone has a secret, but each also has knowledge about someone elses. For example, Miel keeps Sams secret: that Sam is in fact female and lives as a boy because of bacha posh, in which families without sons choose one daughter to present as a boy until adulthood in order to ensure social advantages and safety of the rest of the family. Not a casual, quick read (and more dense and convoluted in places than readers may have patience for), the book nevertheless provides a careful, thoughtful examination of gender, guilt, fear, and forgiveness, weaving together cultural traditions from Pakistan, Latin America, and the United States in unexpected ways. sarah hannah gmez (c) Copyright 2016. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
McLemore (The Weight of Feathers, 2015) mesmerizes once again with a lush narrative set at the thresholds of identity, family, and devotion.No one thinks twice about the friendship between Miel, the Latina teen who fears pumpkins and grows roses from her wrist, and Samir, the Italian-Pakistani boy who hangs his painted moons all around town and brought Miel home when she appeared from inside a water tower as a child. They are linked by their strangeness and bound to each other by their secretsthose that transgender Sam shares about his body and his name and those that Miel keeps about her family and her past. But just as the pairs bond expands to passion, the Bonner girls, who are rumored to have the power to make anyone fall in love with them, decide that Miels roses are the only thing that will repair their weakening influence over others, and the four white sisters will leverage every secret that haunts Miel and that could destroy Sam to get what they want. Luxurious language infused with Spanish phrases, Latin lunar geography, and Pakistani traditions is so rich it lingers on the tongue, and the presence of magic is effortlessly woven into a web of prose that languidly unfolds to reveal the complexities of gender, culture, family, and self. Readers will be ensnared in this ethereal narrative long before they even realize the net has been cast. (Magical realism. 13-17) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
