This book I'm sure will find its audience, sadly it was not for me. The cover is still beautiful though!

Loved loved loved! I love this book. Too many emotions are going through me right now so this text may be incoherent. oh, this book was beautiful and wild; however, it was not because of the flowers. It was because of the backstory of La Pandera, the meadow all the Nomeovlides live and grow in, the death that surrounds it, and the love story that comes out of it! I need to strength my thoughts, because as of right now, I can only speak the word "um" and cry. AH! I need help since this book is beautiful!

I loved seeing a trans or non-binary character in this story. The magical realism with the roses was so interesting and fresh. This novel has stayed with me for a few years.

Cannot fault this author's imagination or creativity. Gorgeous use of magical realism. Some of the prose may veer a bit purple but an original, unique experience.

I just want to add a bunch of heart eye emojis as my review because that's how I feel. I LOVE McLemore's magical realism. It is PERFECT.

DNF'd at 50%

I really wanted to love this book but sadly, we weren't a good fit.

Despite an incredibly lush and richly described world - one would argue a little too much, despite the allure of a strange power and a lover's curse, despite the instant promise of an LGBT subplot - I found myself immensely bored. By the halfway point, nothing exciting had actually happened and I couldn't see any reason to continue with it.

Although this book was not for me, I understand the need for 'quiet' books that explore family, friendship and sexuality on our shelves.

I tried so hard with this book! I wanted to love it because it is being raved about. This book was terrible for me to finish. I wish I had enjoyed it more, but sometimes you just have to put the book down and pick it up at another time. I'm looking forward to that time with Wild Beauty!

Wild Beauty by Anna-Marie McLemore is a book you could simply describe with the word lush. It’s a gorgeously written, complex story about love, family, and acknowledging and coming to terms with the past. This is absolutely not the kind of book that you rip through in a single day, but one that requires bite sized processing to fully inhabit McLemore’s immersive setting.

Wild Beauty follows the Nomelovides women who live on an estate called La Pradera. There are three generations of five Nomelovides women each. There’s five sets of grandmothers, mothers, and daughters. The women are unable to leave La Pradera permanently – they end up dying if they try to make a break for it. There also is a curse on the men they love – if a Nomelovides woman loves a man too much La Pradera takes him and he disappears. However, when a young man appears in La Pradera out of nowhere, they believe the other lovers might come back and there;s a possibility the tide may be turning on the curse.

So this story mainly follows Estrella who is from the youngest generation of Nomelovides women. Estrella is the one who finds Fel, the young man, in the gardens. She’s also, along with her four cousins, a little bit in love with this girl named Bay who was also raised on the La Pradera property.

I won’t give anything about this book away – because it’s worth unraveling on your own. However, I will say this book reminds me a lot of Isabel Allende and Sarah Addison Allen but for the YA set. It’s beautifully written. It is worth the slower read – just be patient with this book and realize you aren’t going to read it in a single sitting.

Love the cover of this book!

I love how flowery this story was. I love the writing style and I loved the characters. Loved this magical world as well.

I think everything that Anna-Marie McLemore writes is straight up gorgeous. I love her commitment to telling different stories with diverse characters, and at the heart of them is love. I just don't know that I fully understood this one--I didn't really get an idea of the time or place this was supposed to be set in, and maybe there were too many characters to really be able to appreciate all of them.

This was such a beautifully written story! I have purchased a copy for my classroom and my students love it!

I loved the characters and the magic within the pages!

I was kind of disappointed in this one. Its got a great premise, and some interesting action, but the main character felt kind of flat to me. I also didn't buy the romance with the boy. The best part of the book was the interactions between all the women, the aunties and the girls, and how they were competitive yet still a close family. I disliked the writing style. The author is quite florid in her descriptions and this is perhaps what made me feel like her characters were too flat. Anyway, if you like these types of witchy teen romances, go ahead! Otherwise, this one may be a pass.

I read Wild Beauty back in December and I still find myself thinking about it now. I hadn’t read anything by Anna-Marie McLemore so I didn’t really know what to expect with this one. I’d heard good things about it though so I went in with high expectations. It definitely met this expectations.

The writing was beautiful, the story was completely unique, and the characters were so complex. While the story is classified as magical realism, it was just realistic enough to think that it could come true. And while it’s not a story that you may immediately be invested in, once you get to know the characters, you won’t want to leave them behind.

I'm blown away as always by Anna-Marie McLemore's books. There's casual mentions of periods, people all over the LGBTQ+ spectrum, and the best magical realism around. I love the spanish language and latino culture throughout her books. I always love the family dynamics and traditions we get to see. Her genderqueer or trans characters are always extra special to me and I love knowing her husband helps with those parts of the books.

Her stories are always full of strong women and huge, tight-knit families. The love stories are always lush and romantic. I'm always surprised by the different ways she infuses magic in the worlds. I never see them coming and yet they feel like it's something that should've always been in our world. The life lessons and hard truths are interwoven into these magical worlds and teach both the characters and the reader. There's always fantastic personal growth from the characters and I love looking at who they are at the end of the novel versus the beginning.

I'm a big fan of Anna-Marie McLemore and her luscious writing. Wild Beauty was another hit for me. With its gorgeous prose and its intriguing characters, the book completely swept me off my feet. I will read anything and everything she writes in the future!

Wild Beauty wasn't my cup of tea. The writing style was good and interesting, but the pace of the story was too slow for my taste. It took pages for anything to happen and when it did, I've already lost interest. Plus, the characters weren't remarkable. As I said, it wasn't the kind of book I enjoy reading.

This will appeal to the more thoughtful reader. But I enjoyed it a lot.

McLemore's writing is descriptively beautiful and lush. The imagery is vivid and I can perfectly picture the gardens of her setting. The pacing and the unveiling of clues about the land were a little too slow. I would have liked a bit more of character development in order to distinguish the five cousins.

Wow. Just WOW.

I received an ARC of Anna-Marie McLemore's last book (When the Moon Was Ours), which I absolutely loved, so I jumped at the chance to read her newest book. I had high expectations, but I didn't think she'd be able to match my love for WTMWO. Well played, Ms. McLemore. Well played.

This book doesn't just build a world where there are subtle, yet magical differences from our world, but transports you there. The land that the Nomeolvides women live on, La Pradera, was a character of its own. Both protective and vindictive, it protects the Nomeolvides "witches" from the outside world, but at a price: the women can never leave the land, and any men they dare to love is taken from them. The newest generation of Nomeolvides, five cousins as close as sisters, all in love the same woman: their neighbor, Bay. They hope that Bay's gender is enough to keep her safe, but in praying to La Pradera to protect their love, they instead receive a boy covered in soil who seems to come from a different era, triggering a set of events that change both La Pradera and the Nomeolvides women's willingness to love.

I don't love flowers, but this book made me interested in flowers? I don't know. I just love everything about this book. Recommended for people who like magical realism, women of color who are IN CHARGE, witch fables, queer love, het love, sisterly love, love in general, poetic storytelling, and taking down "the man."

Well, first things first. This is easily one of the most beautiful covers of a book I've ever seen and it sets the tone perfectly for what's inside. This book is full of lyrical writing and  magic realism, which means you absolutely have to be in the mood for that when you pick up this book. You have to be willing to suspend reality and fully immerse yourself in La Pradera in order to get the full feel of what's happening, and in some parts of the book I'm still not sure if I really understood it, but it didn't bother me.  La Pradera becomes its' own character in the book. We aren't really given a time period for the story, but the island has an old vibe to it and we get the distinct impression that the island is a living thing. The Neolivde sisters have a unique ability to grown flowers out of their hands and they feel at home in La Pradera because they have always been shunned in other locations. But, early on Estrella shows the reader that they love the island but are also afraid of what it will do them if they chose to leave.

We are introduced to the Neovolide sisters as they are fighting. Each sister is staking claim to the heart and attention of their friend, Bay. I loved that it takes the author a little bit to reveal that Bay is a tomboy girl. Her gender is not a big deal to the sisters or their family and its simply dropped into the story as a fact. The sisters decide that they cannot love Bay because the curse on the family line is that everyone they love disappears. Estrella is the main character and we follow her as she deals with her feelings for Bay, emerging feelings for a newcomer to the island and trying to figure out how to please the island that takes so much from her and her sisters.

There is a lot going on in this book and it touches on a few different genres. As long as you are in the mood for a lyrical, deep and thought provoking story this book would be a good choice for you.