This story was sloooooow. And then it took a dramatic magical realism turn that was out of left field. The two parts of this story were not integrated at all and I’m still wondering what the heck I just read. The writing is lovely…and the characters were pretty cool…but this just didn’t work.

You have to go into this book understanding what it is… a gorgeous modern- day fairy/folk tale. I want more of each character introduced in this story.

This book took a decided turn into the magical realm that I wasn't expecting—and honestly decreased my enjoyment of the entire thing. Had the two parts been better integrated, I would have enjoyed it a whole lot more.

Full review to come, but you can check out a teaser mini-review over on the Forever Young Adult Instagram.

Anyone who lived in Portland in the '90s will recognize and feel nostalgic for that gritty, funky, laid back town. The story was pretty good, magical realism and all (now that I think of it, '90s Portland is a kind of magical realism place), but I didn't understand the ending at all. Probably I'm not familiar enough with the mythology behind it. But my lovely, lost Portland!

I loved this book, but it's not for everyone. This book was, honestly, my exact brand of weird, and I think it was what I needed at a particular moment in time. It is strange and it is beautiful and disconnected and flowing. It is old and modern all at once. It's set in the 90s, but it honestly took me a while to realize that. There's an absence of cell phones, but I feel like that's relatively well accounted for by the story in most places, so it has a kind of odd anachronistic feeling - like it could be happening now, or really, at any point in the last 30 years or so.

Admittedly, I took a break from reading it once things got weird, but I came back to it and I'm glad I did. As other reviews have said, there is a break, late in the novel, where it just gets... weird. The book initially reads like magical realism. It feels like it takes place in real life, and while there are magical details, everything is still mostly plausible. Probably around 3/4 of the way in, that changes to become just... completely dreamy and surreal. Completely implausible, in a literal sense. Beautiful and strange and somehow oddly right. I think I enjoyed the book so much for a couple of reasons:

1. I choose to believe that everything that happened in it was literal. I want to believe in the magical transformations and the found objects in the perfect spot at the perfect time, and in newfound fairy tales coming to life. I want to believe that's possible, in the world of fiction, if not in the world of real life.

2. It was a close echo of some relationships I've had in my life. I had a brother that I loved very much, and, while I didn't lose him in the same way that Iph lost Orr, the image of Orr drifting away into the forest, of finding somewhere he truly belongs, among creatures who understand him - somewhere that he's happy and at peace... Well, that brings me a bit of comfort, and maybe a little bit of hope. And I think I needed it.

This is an odd, dreamy, ambiguous, lyrical book, and so, it probably deserves an odd, dreamy, nonsensical review. And so, here's the review that I wrote when I was halfway through, before the strange surrealism kicked in:

The plot is feathers strung together with gossamer thread. At once disconnected, and yet, all of a piece. You gather them, one by one, until you hold a strange kind of feathered bouquet between your palms. Just as suddenly, the bouquet becomes a bird and takes flight, and you’re left wondering what it is you’ve just seen, and if it was even real.

******

In short... this book isn't everyone's cup of tea. I think I'm the kind of person who's capable of discerning between something that's genuinely "bad" (poorly written or plotted or what-have-you) versus something that's just "not for me" - I think this book exists on the opposite end of that spectrum. I think it is both objectively good - beautiful and dreamy in ways that I can't accurately describe - and almost exactly for me. I hope, if you try it, that you enjoy it.

This book is the weirdest thing I’ve ever read. The first half is good while being overly descriptive and unrealistic. But randomly in the last 100 pages it goes from being a realistic fiction book to fantasy for no reason. It makes absolutely no sense and is extremely annoying end to a book that could’ve been something. I would not recommend reading this book the main character is extremely naive and almost annoying

I enjoyed this story and all the lovely characters, but I'm still mulling over how I feel about

Spoiler

the intermixing of magic with neurodivergence

. Rating may change once I've had a chance to sit with it longer.