Book Review: Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma

Book Title & Author: Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma
Published by: Dutton Juvenile on June 14th, 2011
Genre: Magical Realism
Pages: 348
Format: Paperback
Source: Purchased
Goodreads
🌟🌟🌟🌟
Synopsis:
Chloe's older sister, Ruby, is the girl everyone looks to and longs for, who can't be captured or caged. When a night with Ruby's friends goes horribly wrong and Chloe discovers the dead body of her classmate London Hayes left floating in the reservoir, Chloe is sent away from town and away from Ruby.

But Ruby will do anything to get her sister back, and when Chloe returns to town two years later, deadly surprises await. As Chloe flirts with the truth that Ruby has hidden deeply away, the fragile line between life and death is redrawn by the complex bonds of sisterhood.

With palpable drama and delicious craft, Nova Ren Suma bursts onto the YA scene with the story that everyone will be talking about.

Review:
Ughhh, Nova Ren Suma is a freaking WIZARD! I mean, wow. Her books are so odd, so strange, so unpredictable, but above all else, her books are BRILLIANT. I read her books kinda backwards, as I have already read her later books and just last month, read her debut. I can see how she has grown as a writer & storyteller. Her books all have this mysterious & magical quality to them that I just ADORE.

Did I mention she's an auto-read author for me? Because she is and has been since last fall when I first read one of her books.

With Suma's books, you don't usually know what's going on. There's a lot of suggestible things in her books that make you really wonder what the hell is going on. With magical realism, you wonder what's real and what's magic. I wondered that in her other books, but I definitely wondered it in Imaginary Girls, maybe even more than her other books.

Ruby bugged the absolute crap out of me. She was annoying, clingy, pushy, authoritative, cruel and all sorts of other adjectives. While I couldn't stand the way she treated Chloe (I'll get into that later) it was the way she treated everyone else that pissed me off. Especially, the guys that lived in the town. She was utterly awful to them. I never thought I'd be defending the male gender in this book, but holy crap was Ruby cruel to them.

She treated Chloe like crap too. She was overbearing, critical, bossy and just basically acting like a parent. This made absolutely no sense because Chloe had been living with her father for awhile, so clearly she had at least one functional parent. Ruby saw herself as Chloe's mom, and I knew this was going to be a potentially big issue with unhealthy boundaries. And it was a big issue as the book unfolded.

As much as I couldn't stand the way Ruby treated those around her, I found her so captivating. Especially when strange things happens and she hints that she had a part in the strange incidents. The lengths Ruby goes to keep Chloe alive are both crazy & awesome. I won't say more about that because I don't want to spoil anyone who hasn't read the book.

Final thoughts: This book is so atmospheric as all of Suma's books are. So creepy, dark and mysterious. I cannot wait to get my hands on her upcoming release.

Book Review: Wild Beauty by Anna-Marie McLemore

Book Title & Author: Wild Beauty by Anna-Marie McLemore
Published by: Feiwel & Friends on October 3rd, 2017
Genre: Magical Realism
Pages: 340
Format: ARC
Source: Gifted
Goodreads
🌟🌟🌟🌟

Synopsis:Love grows such strange things.
For nearly a century, the Nomeolvides women have tended the grounds of La Pradera, the lush estate gardens that enchant guests from around the world. They’ve also hidden a tragic legacy: if they fall in love too deeply, their lovers vanish. But then, after generations of vanishings, a strange boy appears in the gardens.
The boy is a mystery to Estrella, the Nomeolvides girl who finds him, and to her family, but he’s even more a mystery to himself; he knows nothing more about who he is or where he came from than his first name. As Estrella tries to help Fel piece together his unknown past, La Pradera leads them to secrets as dangerous as they are magical in this stunning exploration of love, loss, and family.

Review:
Is "holy wow" a phrase I can use without sounding weird, because that's the only way to describe how I feel after reading this book. Full disclosure: It took me a really long time to get through this book, but I'm going to attribute that to my health being in the crapper. When I finally picked it back up in June, I found myself captivated by the writing and the story that the writing told.

In magical realism, it generally takes me a lot longer to get into the book, but 9 times out of 10, it's totally worth it and I end up really enjoying or even loving the book. Thankfully, this was one of those 9 out of 10 times and it also made me realize I need to read ALL of McLemore's books ASAP.

Normally, writing like what was in the book bugs me because it just seems too flowery and I hate flowery writing. In this case, it worked and somehow made the book and its contents more magical. From learning about the secrets of LaPradera to witnessing two separate romances, both of which I enjoyed (which is rare) to learning the mysteries of Fel and how he fit into everything.

One of the biggest hooks for me in books, is the inclusion of family and this book had that. From the five cousins to their mothers and grandmothers etc. And this family was very close knit, which is another huge plus for me. They had all experienced loss of some sort. Whether it was loss of a lover or loss of family.

I loved the bisexual representation in this one. It was so well done and there was so much of it. More than I usually see in even a contemporary and definitely more than I see in magical realism. Ugh, it was beautiful.

Learning about the history of the Nomeolvides women was totally fascinating and I found myself hooked on that, far more than I expected to be.

Final thoughts: If it hadn't taken me so long to get through this book, I'd be giving it a full 5 stars. I definitely need to read the rest of McLemore's books and so should everyone else.