Wild Beauty: A Novel

Anna-Marie McLemore’s Wild Beauty is as complex as it is beautiful. Estrella and her cousins are part of a long legacy of Nomeolvides women who have cultivated the La Pradera gardens for the last century. Flowers bloom and flourish under their fingertips at will, but their enchanting gift is not the only inheritance passed down from mother to daughter. For the Nomeolvides women, their love is a curse upon the men they love. They either watch them disappear, some vanishing right before their lover’s eyes, or watch them walk away, never to be heard from again. When Fel, a mysterious boy, appears in their garden with no memory of who he is, the Nomeolvides women believe his arrival may mean the return of their past lovers. But Fel’s quest to discover who he is will uncover dark truths that will change the Nomeolvides women’s lives forever.McLemore once again dazzles with her storytelling ability. With lush and intimate descriptions, the gardens of La Pradera come to life. The setting is equal parts magical and strange. There is both darkness and light in the Nomeolvides’s world that the author is expert at exploring. The women in Wild Beauty are well-rounded and engaging. I loved how the author let’s the reader learn more about these young women as they learn about themselves. When the novel opens, Estrella and her cousins are desperate to outrun their family curse. Though history says that it is only men that disappear, none of them want to take the risk when it comes to Bay Briar. Bay has been a part of their world forever and ever since she lost her grandmother, who owned the land the Nomeolvides have cared for for generations, they feel even more protective of her. When they all discover that each of them has fallen a little in love with her, they take action, sacrificing their greatest treasures to La Pradera in exchange for Bay’s safety. McLemore focuses on the alienation these young women experience because of their gift, but she also explores how the possibility of finding love can alienate them from one another. It’s a consequence predicated on the idea that love is something that will eventually caused them pain.Fel adds another wrinkle to the story. The ease at which the Nomeolvides women welcome him into their family filled me with so much affection for them. Though sadness is ingrained in their world, it is their love for one another that motivates and drives them. There’s a growing affection between Fel and these women. They care for him like one of their own and he in turn feels the need to protect them. He wants to discover who he is, but there’s a part of him that is afraid of the truth and what this will mean for his relationship with these women. Estrella and her family are an ensemble I’d like to see more often. There are three generations of Nomeolvides women under the same roof who are joined by and large by their shared grief, but are inevitably separated by experience. While the older generations know grief intimately, the younger ones have not yet lost someone they love. The older women have walked this life for decades. They know what it’s like to love and grieve, to watch those closest to them crumble under the weight of loss, and what it’s like to give everything to the land that has both blessed and cursed them. Estrella and her cousins are only beginning to learn what it means to be a part of the Nomeolvides family.Wild Beauty is a multi-layered story that will have readers enthralled from the very first page. McLemore has crafted a novel that devastates readers both with its beauty and sorrow in equal parts. If you’ve never picked up this author’s novels, you are missing out on some of the most profound and stunning writing published in recent years.

The writing was absolutely gorgeous, the world she built was beautiful and intriguing and definitely a place I would love to visit. The characters were pretty good too. So why only three stars? Everything moved SO. SLOW. I mean, they have the magic to grow flowers instantaneously, but I felt like I was watching and waiting for the flower of this book to bloom in real time. Magical realism is usually slow for me anyways, but this one seemed to drag. Beautiful story, beautiful book, but really, I think I took too long to get there.

Rating: 4/5“Sorrow was a family heirloom, written into their blood like ink of a will.”It all starts with the Nomeolvides, a family of las hijas del aire (daughters air), derived from a people who are nomadic out of boundaries drawn in their original homeland. These cousins, mothers, grandmothers share the gift of growing from their very hands and feet, sunken deep into the earth. As nomadic people with rare gifts, they are prone to receiving prejudice. Women who struggle to control their gift out of misuse have a history of being called witches and at times outright murdered by the fear of others.“Because falling in love with a girl who feared nothing in this world had left her ready to love a boy whose heart had been broken before she ever touched him.”This book was so much more than a beautiful flower garden with beautiful girls and a mysterious boy. The author effortlessly explores immigration, sexuality, people of color, gender fluidity, social status, and those who are forgotten. I adored the way the McLemore didn’t make their love for women and occasionally men as something to be astounded by. Perhaps in the future, this book will not be so uncommon and I’ll be happy for such a diverse future, but at this moment books with these character’s are rare. I enjoyed learning the secret of their ‘curse’ and it had me questioning our own land and what lays beneath.“They would change nothing by picking flowers.They had to rip out their fate by the roots.”To read my more in-depth review head to: Inktingeddreamer.wordpress.com/

More beautiful writing from McLemore. I love her prose, I love how she writes families, I love how she writes food and color and flowers.Bay is fierce when she needs to be and such a delight. Calla is my favorite Nomeolvides girl, though I also love Estrella a lot. And Fel <3 <3I loved the themes of seeing who people really are, of seeing what has really happened, of seeing what is really true.

I enjoyed this book very much, it is magical realism read. A lot of people think it is fantasy but it isn’t. It checked a lot of boxes for me such as; POC as main character, bisexual romance & acceptance and a gorgeous portrayal of Hispanic culture and superstition. If you like a story that is whimsical with a slow progressing romance, this one is for you. I loved it!

Anna-Marie McElmore has a talent for creating art out of words, and using those words to tell stories like WILD BEAUTY. A lush blend of magic and mystery—and love—I read slowly, savoring each page until the end. Beautiful. Wrenching. Emotional. All these words and more are ones I would use to describe this book.

Loved the description of the gardens, flowers. The scenery was beautiful. Although, it has little action, it was a good book. Enjoyed it.

I’ve read over 130 books this year and this is tied for first place. Beautiful. Moving. Worth every word and then some. Not just for teens, but for all readers.

The Nomeolvides women's lives have been shaped by magic for generations. Gifted with the ability to make beautiful flowers spring from their hands, but cursed to lose their lovers, they have been hounded out of towns again and again. The grounds, and owners, of the La Pradera estate offers them sanctuary, and in return the family create and maintain magnificent gardens beyond comparison. However, the land exacts a terrible price for their safety. Not only do the Nomeolvide's lovers disappear forever if the women love them too hard, but the gardens kill any woman who tries to leave for good.Determined to keep Bay, the girl they all love, safe, the latest generation of Nomeolvides girls offer up gifts to the land, and end up raising a mysterious boy from the ground. His appearance is followed by a set of disasters as Bay's unwelcome relative Reid appears to claim La Pradera, and the Nomeolvides women. Worse yet, Bay suddenly disappears. Meanwhile Fel, the boy who emerged from the ground with no memories, grows dangerously close to Estrella, the member of the Nomeolvides clan who has always felt a little out of step with the world around her. Pulled in multiple directions by her family's secrets, her anger, and her feelings for Fel, Estrella's world begins to spin at a dizzying pace.Wild Beauty is a stunning book about magic, romance, fear, and oppression. Its prose unwinds sensuously. It is a book that makes a virtue out of decadent, indulgent descriptions. The romantic relationships that take place between some of its characters unfurl as the slowest of slow burns. Wild Beauty has a wide cast of lesbian, bisexual and genderqueer characters who are hopelessly, and not so hopelessly, in love, and this book features of a variety of passionate romantic relationships. It's also a novel full of strong, detailed family relationships which stretch over multiple generations. And finally, it's a novel with an intensely political heart; a portion of which is fully revealed to great effect close to the end of the story.This novel is a delicious treat to unwrap, and will snare you with its masterful depictions of everything from the treasures the girls use to appease the curse, to the gardens they create, to the hotbed of bubbling emotions that surrounds the family and everyone they come into contact with. Highly recommended. I grabbed When The Moon Was Ours, one of McLemore's other novels which came highly recommended, as soon as I could.

It was slow, it was melodic, it was beautiful and lyrical and just stunning in every way. I adored the characters, their lives, their ability to draw flowers from the land with their bare hands. I loved the relationships, the representation, the history. Everything just worked, and it created a totally stunning novel that is going straight onto my favourites list.

Anna Marieclemore is an outstanding lyrical writer. Ahe conveys passion and tragedy so well. It was my first read by her and have gone on to purchase two more.

Interesting concept and storyline and intriguing characters. I was surprised I enjoyed the magical realism aspect of the story.

I love the cover of this book sooo much! ^_^