Winner of the 2016 Tiptree Award Longlisted for the 2016 National Book Award for Young People’s LiteratureStonewall Book Award Honor“McLemore’s second novel is such a lush surprising fable, you half expect birds to fly out of the pages… 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 … profound, and that the connection between two people is no more anyone’s business than why the dish ran away with the spoon.”
–Jeff Giles, New York Times Book Review
Anna-Marie McLemore’s debut novel The Weight of Feathers was greeted with rave reviews, a YALSA Morris Award nomination, and spots on multiple “Best YA Novels” lists. Now, McLemore delivers a second stunning and utterly romantic novel, again tinged with magic.
To everyone who knows them, best friends Miel and Sam are as strange as they are inseparable. Roses grow out of Miel’s wrist, and rumors say that she spilled out of a water tower when she was five. Sam is known for the moons he paints and hangs in the trees and for how little anyone knows about his life before he and his mother moved to town. But as odd as everyone considers Miel and Sam, even they stay away from the Bonner girls, four beautiful sisters rumored to be witches. Now they want the roses that grow from Miel’s skin, convinced that their scent can make anyone fall in love. And they’re willing to use every secret Miel has fought to protect to make sure she gives them up.
Atmospheric, dynamic, and packed with gorgeous prose, When the Moon was Ours is another winner from this talented author.
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I won this book as part of a Goodreads First Reads giveaway.
When the Moon Was Ours follows two characters through a story that has multicultural elements and magical realism, but also has central LGBT themes. A transgender boy, the best friend he’s falling in love with, and both of them deciding how they want to define themselves.
Let me start off by saying that I absolutely love the cover, unfortunately I had to mark it as DNF at 38%. *sigh*
I really wanted to like this book and was excited that I won a copy. I’m disappointed because the synopsis sounded wonderful and I was so looking forward to reading it. Sadly I found myself starting and stopping it several times until finally I just put it down for good because the flowery language was just too much for me. Maybe some may appreciate it, but for me, it was so poetically written that I feel the story got lost and made it hard to understand what was going on at times. Sam and Miel are such magnificent characters and I would have liked to continue reading about their journey, both together and separately, but I found the language so distracting that I couldn’t get into it or connect with the story at all. It’s too bad because there is a real message about acceptance in there…..if you can just get past the pretty writing. I did skim the rest of the book to get an idea of how it ends, which is why I rated it. I doubt I will try reading it again in the future. Perhaps magical realism just isn’t my thing.
I don’t even know what to do with this book. I had to force myself to finish it, mostly because I was hoping it would become more engaging. There is a lot of magical realism in this book that I just couldn’t connect with. I still don’t understand the vast majority of what happened or what it is supposed to mean. Literally the only thing I loved about this book was Sam.
This is one of the most beautifully unique books I have ever read. I have a hard time capturing in words how this book made me feel and how much I adore it. McLemore writes with gorgeous ethereal prose about Miel and Sam, best friends who everyone else considers odd but who find solace and redemption in each other. If you are a fan of magical realism, emotionally resonant stories, and characters who are radiantly filled with light and life—you will fall in love with this book. It might even change your life.
“When the Moon Was Ours” stands out in the world of “magical realism” as a novel which tackles such difficult issues as child abuse and gender identity which few others would dare to face.
The book follows the story of Miel, a girl who has roses that grow from her wrist, and Sam, the neighbor boy who’s the only friend she has in their small town high school. Miel becomes the unfortunate focus of the Bonner sisters’ attention- who believe that the roses which grow from Miel’s wrist could somehow magically cement their status as the most sought-after girls in town.
What seems at first like a modern day fairy tale, becomes much more complicated – between Miel’s half-remembered past and the secrets only she and Sam share. Combined with the Bonner sister’s ruthless determination, there’s a lot more behind this story than a simple story of magic in a modern, small town.
The style of prose for this book is similar to traditional folk stories or fairy tales: a narrative voice, rather than an in-the-moment retelling. Stylistically, similarities could be drawn to Kate DiCamillo’s “The Tale of Despereaux,” or Grace Lin’s “Where the Mountain Meets the Moon” – both fairy tales aimed at a much younger audience.
Unlike the traditional fairy tale, however, the narrator of “When the Moon Was Ours” is very much ware of the differences between the folk tales of generations past, and the reality as experienced by those who must live through the “fairy tale” events.