Wild Beauty

By: Anna-Marie McLemore

Narrated by: Almarie Guerra

Love grows such strange things.

Anna-Marie McLemore's debut novel, The Weight of Feathers, garnered fabulous reviews and was a finalist for the prestigious YALSA Morris Award, and her second novel, When the Moon Was Ours, was longlisted for the 2016 National Book Award for Young People's Literature. Now, in Wild Beauty, McLemore introduces a spellbinding setting and two characters who are drawn together by fate - and pulled apart by reality.

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.

©2017 Anna-Marie McLemore (P)2018 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"No one does magical realism quite like McLemore, and this third novel, laced with slow-burning suspense, folklore, romance, and spun together with exquisite, luxuriant prose, proves it.... Sheer magic: fierce, bright, and blazing with possibility." (Booklist)

Exceptionally Wonderful.

This is a well-crafted story with strong but not overly complicated world-building, interesting yet intelligent characters and a plot that leaves you compelled to continue on and on. Truly worth every beautiful second.

Took my breath away

This book started slowly, but by the end took my breath away. I spent the last hour or so crying, it was so beautiful and emotional. Like Blanca & Roja, this is a story about a family with a curse - this time one where the women can pull flowers from bare earth and who lose the ones they love. It's a story about love and family and loss and heartbreak. It's also a story about undocumented immigrants and uncaring rich men and what it means to be bisexual. It was poetic and lovely and spoke to my heart

Beautiful and lush

This was such a lovely read and so visual! I could see the garden in my head it was described so vividly! The story is so timely and well told and I loved the LGBTQ representation as well as the immigrant story. This will sit with me for a long while.

I just don't care

I just never found the book the least bit interesting. Beautiful writing with a meandering plot that just never really went anywhere.

I will never get these 9 hours back

Cheesy story read cheesily. I was drawn in by the premise (which is sound), but the story fails to develop it. As the plot aimlessly meanders, one is left reading a middle school drama combined with equal parts Gardener’s Digest and a very surfacey reading of Marx, Foucault, and friends. The phrases “rich man” and “brown skin” appear so frequently it feels you’re reading a rambling young adult manifesto. Likewise, the obvious reversal of gender roles comes off as predictable rather than refreshing. There’s some good queer and class-conscious fairy tales out there — this is not one of them.