I went into The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender expecting really great things, so it was probably inevitable that I came away a little disappointed. Normally I love magical realism, and this book, with its protagonist born with wings and its generations of women who turn into birds and bake their feelings, has magic in spades. That might be part of the problem. It just didn't feel entirely genuine to me; the improbable events didn't draw me further into the world of Ava Lavender and her family, instead they alienated me from it. They were just so heavyhanded. I felt like I was just skimming of the surface of the book, but every time I tried to get my hair wet something would slap me back up and out of it.
I want to try to read this book again in a few years, to
see if something has shifted and I finally "get it," but I worry that
the time I would have truly loved this book would have been limited to
when I was sixteen and in love with sobbing over heartbreak and
ill-fated love.
The writing is lovely, if a little purple at times. I was a bit surprised at first that the book went so far back into Ava Lavender's family history before getting to her story, but I actually really enjoyed hearing about her mother and grandmother.
Maybe my problem was reading this so soon after Like Water for Chocolate; I was too overloaded on magical realism to begin with. Maybe all of the excellent reviews I read beforehand gave me unrealistic expectations that this book would be one of those few that can read your soul and upend and enhance your understanding of the world. Sadly, it was not that book for me, but I can see how it might be that book for someone else.
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