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nerdinthelibrary 's review for:
When the Moon Was Ours
by Anna-Marie McLemore
content warnings: transphobia, racism, blood, body horror
representation: latina main character, italian-pakistani trans love interest, latina trans side character, wlw side character
I now need to read all of Anna-Marie McLemore's other books because this was gorgeous. The prose, the characters, the relationships, the conflicts, everything. It was all beautiful.
I'm pretty sure that the biggest praise McLemore gets is for their magical writing, and it's so well-deserved. Every sentence they write is lyrical, and frankly hard to figure out whether it's a metaphor or is meant to be taken literally, but you don't even care.
I'm not going to lie, the first 100 or so pages didn't grab me the way I wanted to, but then the plot picked up and I became immediately invested. You also began to really learn more about the characters, some secrets being revealed at around that point, which meant that the rest of the book was just magic.
The characters and the relationships they have with each other is the most important aspect of this book as it's entirely character-driven, and thankfully they were all so incredibly fascinating. Miel and Sam are both such beautiful, broken people and seeing them coming together and falling apart should have gotten tedious but only made me care about them more, somehow. As someone who isn't a big fan of friends-to-lovers, this relationship was wonderful, and as you're reading you can definitely tell how personal their romance was to McLemore.
Aracely was such an interesting character, one I went from liking to distrusting to loving to hating and everything in between. She's an incredibly flawed person, but one you can never not empathise with. Learning of her past with the lead characters was both lovely and heartbreaking, and her relationship with both Miel and Sam were so different but equally enjoyable.
The Bonner sisters were such great antagonists, never been made into cliche villains and McLemore always making sure that you knew they were people who were deeply flawed. My only wish is that we had gotten more of Lian and Chloe, a bit too much of the focus being on Peyton and especially Ivy.
I know some people don't like to read author's notes, but please, if you read this book, read the author's note because it is so incredibly beautiful and will have you in tears.
representation: latina main character, italian-pakistani trans love interest, latina trans side character, wlw side character
I now need to read all of Anna-Marie McLemore's other books because this was gorgeous. The prose, the characters, the relationships, the conflicts, everything. It was all beautiful.
I'm pretty sure that the biggest praise McLemore gets is for their magical writing, and it's so well-deserved. Every sentence they write is lyrical, and frankly hard to figure out whether it's a metaphor or is meant to be taken literally, but you don't even care.
I'm not going to lie, the first 100 or so pages didn't grab me the way I wanted to, but then the plot picked up and I became immediately invested. You also began to really learn more about the characters, some secrets being revealed at around that point, which meant that the rest of the book was just magic.
The characters and the relationships they have with each other is the most important aspect of this book as it's entirely character-driven, and thankfully they were all so incredibly fascinating. Miel and Sam are both such beautiful, broken people and seeing them coming together and falling apart should have gotten tedious but only made me care about them more, somehow. As someone who isn't a big fan of friends-to-lovers, this relationship was wonderful, and as you're reading you can definitely tell how personal their romance was to McLemore.
Aracely was such an interesting character, one I went from liking to distrusting to loving to hating and everything in between. She's an incredibly flawed person, but one you can never not empathise with. Learning of her past with the lead characters was both lovely and heartbreaking, and her relationship with both Miel and Sam were so different but equally enjoyable.
The Bonner sisters were such great antagonists, never been made into cliche villains and McLemore always making sure that you knew they were people who were deeply flawed. My only wish is that we had gotten more of Lian and Chloe, a bit too much of the focus being on Peyton and especially Ivy.
I know some people don't like to read author's notes, but please, if you read this book, read the author's note because it is so incredibly beautiful and will have you in tears.