Title: When the Moon Was Ours
Author: Anna-Marie McLemore
Genres: Magical Realism, Fantasy, LGBTQIA, Romance
Pages: 288
Publisher: Thomas Dunne
Review Copy: Received electronic ARC from publisher
Availability: Available now
Summary: When the Moon Was Ours follows two characters through a story that has multicultural elements and magical realism, but also has central LGBT themes—a transgender boy, the best friend he’s falling in love with, and both of them deciding how they want to define themselves.
To everyone who knows them, best friends Miel and Sam are as strange as they are inseparable. Roses grow out of Miel’s wrist, and rumors say that she spilled out of a water tower when she was five. Sam is known for the moons he paints and hangs in the trees, and for how little anyone knows about his life before he and his mother moved to town.
But as odd as everyone considers Miel and Sam, even they stay away from the Bonner girls, four beautiful sisters rumored to be witches. Now they want the roses that grow from Miel’s skin, convinced that their scent can make anyone fall in love. And they’re willing to use every secret Miel has fought to protect to make sure she gives them up.
Review: Last October I read The Weight of Feathers on a plane ride, so it seemed fitting for me to read Anna-Marie McLemore’s When the Moon Was Ours while on my trip last weekend. If you loved Feathers, you’ll most likely love Moon as the curses, family problems, and magical realism are all still present. The prose itself is excellent, with many beautiful, sometimes haunting, frequently memorable lines and passages. Moon is a fascinating world filled with women who can cure lovesickness, girls made of water, roses that grow from people’s wrists, boys who paint and hang the dozens of moons, and sisters who can get whatever and whoever they want.
Miel and Sam are the heart of the story, and they are engaging narrators. I loved their perspectives on each other, their relationship, and their trials throughout the book. I always appreciate a romance more when the characters have conflict with each other in addition to conflict from outside sources—it makes the relationship seem more real and makes any eventual triumph all the sweeter. Their romance felt like a natural progression from their friendship, which is no small feat considering their history together isn’t told linearly.
Aracely and Yasmin were also great characters, and the relationships they had with Miel and Sam were both interesting and backed by a great deal of love. I’ve been craving stories with good parents(/parental figures), and Aracely and Yasmin helped satisfy that itch. The Bonner sisters were particularly interesting antagonists, and the way they were alternately chilling and sympathetic made me crave more of their stories. I think McLemore handled their one-entity-in-four-bodies portrayal (and its slow subversion) well.
There were a few points in the book where I felt the story dragged a little (if your tolerance for long descriptive passages is low, it may drag a lot), and I occasionally wished we had a wider view of the world than the one we got. While there are a few plot points I would have adjusted, the story and the characters kept my attention so much so that I was a little sad when I finished.
Recommendation: Buy it now. When the Moon Was Ours is a wonderful successor to McLemore’s debut novel, The Weight of Feathers. Moon would be a great introduction to magical realism for teens and treats romance, sex, and (gender) identity thoughtfully.
Extras
Excerpt from When the Moon Was Ours
“Where Our Magic Lives: An Introduction to Magical Realism”
The Love That Lives Here: On Queer Girls, Transboys, and Sex on the Page