4.5 stars

Ava Lavender was born with wings. There is no explanation of why this happened. She is not an angel, not is she half-bird - she's simply a girl with wings. In this beautiful tale, we follows Ava's life but also that of her mother and her grandmother before her.

The Lavender family is pretty extraordinary and this novel is full of beautiful uses of magical realism from a mother fading away as she mourned her husband and her country of France, to a young woman who turned herself into a canary so she would be noticed by her love, a birdwatcher. The style of writing in this was just so wonderful, and beautiful. It was really elegant and the descriptions were honestly just delicious without being over the top.

I loved that the characters and the plot points in this book were not all sugar and sweet things. The characters had sharp edges to them and a grittiness that made them raw, open and real. But because of the element of magic that weaved throughout, everything was slightly softened up and it gave the story a true beauty.

I absolutely loved this.