Thursday, September 14, 2017

Review: Wild Beauty by Anna-Marie McLemore

Publication Date: October 3rd 2017
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Genre: YA, Fantasy 
Amazon ~ Goodreads ~ TBD

Synopsis: Love grows such strange things.

For nearly a century, the Nomeolvides women have tended the grounds of La Pradera, the lush estate gardens that enchant guests from around the world. They’ve also hidden a tragic legacy: if they fall in love too deeply, their lovers vanish. But then, after generations of vanishings, a strange boy appears in the gardens.

The boy is a mystery to Estrella, the Nomeolvides girl who finds him, and to her family, but he’s even more a mystery to himself; he knows nothing more about who he is or where he came from than his first name. As Estrella tries to help Fel piece together his unknown past, La Pradera leads them to secrets as dangerous as they are magical in this stunning exploration of love, loss, and family.

My Rating
2/5 stars

My Review
Wild Beauty was a really beautiful book, but unfortunately it did not live up to my expectations.

The youngest generation of the Nomeolvides girls are all in love with the same woman. The problem with the Nomeolvides is that when a girl falls in love, the boys always disappear. When the girls give an offering to the land for the safety of girl they love, the land returns a mysterious boy. Fel can't remember anything, not even his name or the reason why he was in the ground in the first place. Estrella believes that he is the lover of one of her ancestors, so when Estrella starts falling in love with Fel, not only does she have to worry about his disappearance, but the wrath of her family.

This book started off very strong. It was really interesting in the beginning, mostly because it was so unique. A bunch of cousins living together under one roof, with three generations of Nomeolvides girls. I loved how the glbt community was introduced into this book, it had a very strong and mature description of everything, it was absolutely fantastic.

At a certain point in the book, a character named Reid comes in. The beginning of the book was really strong until Reid shows up, after this the book starts to slow down and it becomes so boring I had to force myself to keep reading. The middle of the book does not have a lot of action, it mainly focuses on the family, and their power over creating flowers out of nothing. While I like the idea behind this book and the magic powers in it, actually reading about it was kind of boring. 

The other reason I couldn't really get into this book, was because I just wasn't able to connect to any of the characters. Right from the beginning were introduced to the whole family, and its a lot to take in all at once. I found myself forgetting the names of most characters in this story, except for the main two characters and three others. I think this book really needed a family chart, just to see who is related to whom and how.

Overall, this book had a very strong beginning and end, but a terribly boring middle. The magic aspect of this book was interesting, but eventually got a bit boring. The romance and the two main characters were fairly good, but there were just too many characters to keep track of everyone and actually get attached to them. I would still recommend this book to people who like light action stories involving magic and romance.

Happy Reading,
Aneta

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