I'm not crying, you're crying.

Anyone who knows me in real life knows I am terrified of birds. I have been attacked multiple times throughout my lifetime by many different species. And I'm not proud of it, but they refuse to let me ever forget, but I have used my children as a shield in aviaries. TWICE. So yeah...

This book has 3 POVS that are all connected by culture, death, and birds.

Our MC is a young artist that sees the dead, including their mom who was an ornithologist when she was alive. The MC honors their mom by painting birds all throughout NYC specifically Little Syria.
The mom died in a fire. Not really sure how that went down yet but it's suggested she had received numerous threats in connection with her work. Since her death the birds have been doing strange things. Creepy things... like RED FLAG Alfred Hitchcock things...

Then we have Laila Z. She is a Syrian Artist who went missing. Our MC has found her journal which eerily has similarities to their mom's largely in part that both seem to have witnessed a non-existent bird.

This is marketed as Historical Fiction, Contemporary Queer, and Adult Fiction. But for someone like me who suffers from a mild case of Ornithophobia I feel like this can be listed as Light Horror as well.

This is such a fantastic story of self-acceptance and love. All love, lost love, forbidden love, self-love, familiar love, just love. It's beautiful and how it came together was soo unexpected. Not only did I push through the discomfort of the birds but a bitch is thinking about getting a quote and bird tattoo. LOL

HIGHLY RECOMMEND