My feelings on this book are mixed in that there were parts that I really loved or connected with and other parts that just didn’t work for me. I think the choice to have 3 POVs was odd- why did we need two for the modern story and only one for the historical story? 

Rosella’s sections felt out of place on that they either didn’t feel connected to the other stories or they felt repetitive to Lala’s story. There were aspects of Rosella’s character and references to heritage that I loved, since she is the Latino one of the three, so I want to love her, and I kind of do, but I also got her confused with Lala and Lala’s story was much more interesting to me.

I think the weakest part of the book in general is the modern part. The location is ambiguous, the magical realism is cool but not relevant, really, and Rosella and Emil’s relationship was… okay? I absolutely love friends to lovers and their backstory as childhood friends was very sweet, I was rooting for them, but the romantic or intimate scenes largely felt unearned or strange, which was jarring in comparison to Lala and Alifair. I like that Emil is into science and a genuinely sweet guy, but that was kind of as far as it went. “Teen thinks history isn’t important and changes his mind” isn’t a super compelling arc and it felt like he was just there to connect dots for us. However, I did love the misdirects we got in the present and I would keep him if I were to cut one of the POVs because his direct connection to Lala and the uncovering of her story was actually interesting and did add a little something. That said, the historical part of the book could have stood alone. The modern part could not.

I adored the historical part. I love Alifair and the relationship between him and Lala felt really natural and earned, even with the mysteries surrounding Alifair. I loved the conversations around Alifair’s transness- it was really exciting to imagine a trans character in a historical setting, but McLemore also didn’t dwell on it, building Alifair into a full and dynamic character. I loved Lala’s conversations about passing and being exoticized. Although of course my experience has not been as extreme as hers, I directly related to some of the feelings she had.

the ending of the historic part felt so triumphant, with the town coming together and ending with the wedding- I cried at how beautiful it was.

I definitely like McLemore’s writing style and I like how they handle queerness and how they weave in magical realism and Latinx-ness. I enjoyed this book, but it felt much weaker to me than Wild Beauty (which also had a lot of ambiguity, but which didn’t particularly suffer because of it).