Author: Leslye Walton
Genre: Fantasy; Young Adult
Rating: 8.5/10
Ava Lavender was born with wings upon her shoulder, but the story starts at the roots of this family tree, a family where heartbreak seems to be a birthright.
What a beginning! I was immediately hooked after the prologue and that first chapter. This book was, for lack of a better word, strange, but definitely enthralling. It was unlike anything I have ever read. It is important to note that this is probably the first magical realism book I have picked up, so I don’t have much experience in the genre but I will be exploring more of it soon, because I absolutely love the incorporation of magical elements into everyday stories.
The only thing I could think about while reading this book was how much it reminded me of fairy tales, more specifically Grimm fairy tales. It’s more mature, explicit and definitely messed up at certain parts. It takes an ordinary tale and adds dark twists and turns so that you know what’s coming is going to be pretty brutal.
Good thing I love Grimm fairy tales.
Other features of this book which resembled fairy tales were its writing, characters and plot. The writing was to the point, but with a lyrical flair which I found to be both beautiful and elegant (Kind of out of the blue but the writing style reminded me of The Raven Cycle series, anyone else?). Secondly, some of the side characters were not fleshed out as “realistic” human beings and their descriptions reminded me of typical fairy tale characters. Finally, disregarding the girl with wings, there were still many parts of the plot that were improbable and made no sense. At this point I just want to say that I am not critiquing the book, these are just my observations for why this book reads like a fairy tale to me, and I love that it did.
The only difference is that this story takes place in our world, so we’re given a recognisable time and place, but it’s hard to not get lost in the fantastical feel of the book.
Moreover, the book gave off historical fiction feels, because not only are we in the 1900s, we’re also reviewing the history of a family. I found this aspect of the book to be super interesting. At first, we’re introduced to our main character and we think this story is going to be all about her life, but we’re immediately thrown down the family tree to the story of her grandmother. Their life stories were so fascinating to me, and I have never read a novel which goes through the generations of a family, and definitely not in this manner.
I also think it’s really refreshing to read about the parents/grandparents because more often than not, they’re the inconsequential/oblivious/boring/typical adults. So watching them grow up made me view them differently when we switched to a younger point of view.
Our main characters became more fleshed out as the story wore on and I hurt and felt for them, especially this family of women. You could tell a happy ending was far far away, and it was heartbreaking to read all the struggles and despair in between.
Something else I enjoyed about the characterisation in this book was that whenever a new character was introduced and they played some kind of role, we got to read their entire backstory, which was often very intriguing. I loved the deviation from the main plot to explore new interesting characters who have just entered our story. I know I keep saying this, but these portions of the book also brought fairy tales to mind for me.
However, something I didn’t enjoy as much was the trope “girl is hopelessly in love with boy, boy ruins love for her and also basically her life”, or you could call it the “unlucky in love”/ “it’s better to never love than be hurt” trope. There are so many names for this cliché, and it is one of my least favourite tropes out there. If you’re like me, just keep in mind this book discusses a lot about the tragedies of love (unrequited love, betrayal in love, loss etc.).
In the second half of the book, the story took a serious and dark turn, and I just want to put out a trigger warning for mentions of rape and sexual assault.
As the book went on, I could see the dwindling of fairy tale/magical elements, especially in the last few chapters of the book. I do really like the choice the author made to make the tone more somber, because now we were delving into the topics of hope, change and healing.
Although I was satisfied when I closed the book, I did wish we got more of Ava’s story. I wanted to read about her journey of healing and living through a traumatic experience. I also really wanted to watch her love story play out, because firstly, her love story seemed to be heading in a very heartwarming direction and secondly, I wanted to see how she was able to overcome being a victim of a terrible crime to be in a healthy romantic relationship.
In all, the story as a whole may seem quite simple and ordinary, but the magical elements, the fantastical atmosphere, the writing style, the messages etc. came together to create such a compelling and unique story that I just couldn’t put down.
“Love makes us such fools.”
Reviewed by: N.G.Rainwater (1st Reading)
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