I didn’t know how much I needed this retelling until now. What a beautiful story and an amazing voice!

This beautiful, gripping retelling of Snow White & Rose Red drew me in. McLemore creates these amazing atmospheres of intensity and moodiness, maybe nowhere better than in this book.

Magical realism that ties two fairytales and a ballet together into a new story. Family, identity, colorism are all major themes. Mostly excellent but I hate the “to protect you I won’t talk to you” plot device used.

At its heart, though, it's a book about how you can read someone completely wrong. You can see someone's appearance or wealth or assigned gender and quickly make incorrect assumptions based on that.
McLemore also uses their trademark flowery prose for some thoughtful meditations on color and how it is perceived - both in how Snow White and Rose Red are viewed by others, but also the wider perceived relationship between “fair” and “good” and “dark” and “evil”.
And it's wrong, of course, in case you couldn't guess. It's an assumption shattering, rule-breaking kind of read. Highly recommended.

McLemore's voice is just gorgeous. I'm always so pleased to read her magical realism come to life and I find myself getting lost quickly in the worlds she weaves, it's the same for Blanca & Roja. Absolutely gorgeous "adaptation/retelling" in a completely new world and way.

3.5 stars

Not my favorite of theirs, but there's also a pandemic on and focusing on prose has been difficult. Still a lush, lyrical magical realism retelling of a fairy tale I'm not overly familiar with. If you're a fan of their other work, you'll like this one too.

This book is the perfect one to pick up in October, or when you wish it was October. This book is a lot. It is a Latinx retelling of Snow White and Rose Red, and the Ugly Duckling, and the Bear Prince. The author manages to make it pretty much work, but it was complicated and a bit unwieldy.

So, Blanca and Roja are two sisters. Because of family history, one of them will be taken and turned into a swan. Roja thinks it will be her, but Blanca has done everything she can to make the two of them so similar that the swans won't be able to choose. This isn't an easy strategy, because physically the two sisters are very different. Blanca has blonde hair, light gold skin and honey colored eyes. Frankly, she's more gold than white, but part of the point of the book is that these girls are being forced into stereotypes that they don't really fit. Blanca is the "pretty one," the "sweet one," the one who is able to pass as white at least a bit. Roja is darker skinned with brown eyes and dark auburn hair. She is the "sharp one,", the "fighter", the one who is supposed to use bitterness and guile to get her way. Really, Roja thinks of herself and her colors as brown, but the world sees her as red.

The two sisters love each other dearly but the swans want them to be rivals. The girls want to trust each other but for each of them, their very existence is at stake.

Then there are the prince and the farmboy. Barclay Holt ( "holt" means "wood" in German, and bark is part of his name) is from an important family in town. He disappears into the woods after he becomes part of a conflict that he doesn't know how to resolve. Page, pale as paper, is Barclay's best friend. Page is also queer and feels that "he" is a better pronoun than "she" most of the time but not all the time. Both of these teenagers have gray/blue/brown eyes. We hear a LOT about eye color in this book, because Blanca is told that if she can "get a blue eyed boy", she will save herself from the swans. This becomes somewhat confusing, but Blanca sets out to complete this task because then she wants to give her chance to Roja- or something. Barclay's eyes are a bit bluer than Page's so he is designated as the blue eyed boy. Unfortunate, because Blanca actually has a crush on Page and Roja is drawn to Barclay. Straight out of a telenovela, right?

So, these four dance around each other and are too scared to connect even though they must.

The imagery, as always with this author, is part of the pleasure of the book, which feels saturated with color. Not only do the girls and boys each have their colors, but Page has grown up on an apple farm, and apples of every color and description abound- red, green, violet, peach and more. Cascarones( hollow eggs filled with glitter) are all the colors of the rainbow.The girls use metaphors related to the food they've grown up with like squash blossoms, pan dulce with red sugar crystals, an entire herb garden from their backyard with epazote, lemongrass, oregano. So vibrant and beautiful! That's part of the reason I enjoyed the book. I'm a very visual person and love colors, and this author's writing gives me that extravagantly.

The plot itself may have had one too many things. I especially didn't care about Barclay and his family problems, even though that started off a lot of the plot. Because of all the different conflicts stuffed into the book, the end felt perhaps a bit rushed. But I admire the author for taking all of this on. She addresses gender and racial stereotyping, the complicated relationship between parents and children, queerness and how it is so easily misunderstood, plus several different fairy tales. I'm interested in seeing what the author does next because she always does it beautifully.

I would give the book three and half stars. I had some trouble getting through the story. The story did not grab me. I know that others had enjoyed the book so I would still recommend the book.

I received this ARC so that I could participate in the YA Cafe Podcast episode that discussed it. I was quickly captivated by the novel's complexity and the nuances that added depth to what could have been just another YA novel. For a more in depth review, I invite you to listen to the episode.

Great book and loved the magic of this book. I enjoyed the sisters and swans in this book. another great book by this author that has become an autoread for me.

While I love McLemore, this was not my favorite of her books. Her beautiful writing still shines and her talent of infusing fairy tales into reality shines brightly in this book, as does her passion for LGBTQ representation in her novels. However, the plot felt thin. Perhaps this is because I'm not too familiar with the fairy-tale this is based on (Snow-White and Rose-Red), but the various events of the book felt loosely connected to the overall plot—that one of the del Cisnes sisters is cursed to be taken by the swans and made to be one of them. The shifting rules of the curse made it tricky to follow and the plot became to murky to clearly navigate. While not her strongest novel, it's still worth reading for the porse alone and McLemore's thoughtful trans representation.

No one does magical realism better than Anna-Marie McLemore and fans of her previous novels will not be disappointed by this absolutely stunning re-telling of Snow White/Rose Red/Swan Lake. The representation in this novel is wonderful and her thoughtful writing style makes this a book that is not only quotable but an excellent source of discussion. For teen readers new to McLemore's work, this is a fantastic introduction making it a necessity for YA collections.

I enjoyed this book. I thought it had excellent representation for lgbtqia+ as well as people of latinx descent. I always enjoy reading retellings and this did not disappoint for being an interesting magical realism retelling of a mix of swan lake and snow white. Both of these are fairytales I'm not a big fan of but in this situation I enjoyed the retelling.

What’s not to love about this novel? The characters and the world were well developed and I can never turn down a fairytale retelling.

Blanca & Roja by Anna-Marie McLemore is definitely one of those books by an author you’ve been meaning to read for awhile and when you finally pick up their book, you are so blown away you really feel badly that your past self didn’t pick up one of their books sooner. If you know what I mean. I had already fallen in love with McLemore’s writing in Toil and Trouble but after picking up her most recent full length novel, she’s easily become one of my “auto-read” authors. Blanca & Roja specifically is a magical realism retelling of Snow-White and Rose-Red and Swan Lake about two sisters, one dark and one fair, one kind and one wicked, where one is promised to become a swan.

The story of Roja, who has always known it will be her that becomes the swan, and Blanca, her older sister who wants nothing more than to protect her, is intertwined with the story of two local boys who go missing. There’s a strong element of romance throughout the book, and I thought it was so beautifully handled. The writing in this story is so poetic and the description of everything–from inanimate objects to heartfelt emotion–is flawless. Yes, there is a plot, that is well-paced and kept my interest, but at its core, this breath-taking story is about being judged by others, being judged by yourself, and figuring out who you really are. I devoured Blanca & Roja in a single day and I cannot wait to read more by McLemore.

I really wanted to like this. I love any book that embraces and positively represents LGBTQIA lives, and this book does that admirably. I also love fairy tale retellings. But this was just weird. It was jumpy, felt like it was out of order, and honestly felt like the author was trying harder to be poetic than to actually write a coherent story. Not every line has to be dripping with artistry--sometimes a sentence is there to move the plot along. 100 pages in, I still had no idea what was going on. That's disappointing because I really hoped I would like this author's work.

Oh, this was so pretty and lyrical and well-written and I loved all the nods to all the other fairytales in the world? I struggled a bit with the finding the characterizations fully fleshed out and unique--it's just hard to flesh out so many characters with multiple POVs, I think, but this had such a dreamy, fairytale quality that I almost didn't mind.

This book did not stand out to me as much as I was hoping, but the writing and the story were consistent throughout the book. I really enjoyed the characterization of the two grandmothers because they seemed to exist as the most solid support for the main characters, but especially Yearling (Barclay) and Page. Also, the storytelling included awesome imagery for the woods and the animals.

What threw me off the most is the four narrators for the story. By the end of the book, all four individuals are relevant and necessary for the story, but I was thrown off for the first half of the story trying to remember who everyone was and who was narrating.

Overall, it wasn't great. But I still enjoyed the story as a whole.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Man, am I ever disappointed at the rating I have to give Blanca & Roja by Anna-Marie McLemore. I'm certain it's purely the result of "It's not you, it's me" combined with a healthy dose of "wrong book, wrong time."

Let me preface this by saying there is nothing inherently bad about this book. In fact, McLemore's prose masterfully captures the dream-like quality you expect of magical realism along with a dash of purple prose that maintains its beauty without being excessive.

I love that the tales of Snow-White and Rose-Red as well as Swan Lake are retold here with two Latina girls at the forefront. Blanca and Roja del Cisne's first-person narratives are masterfully steeped in Latinx culture. As both sisters fight for each other and themselves to fight the family curse that will turn one of them into a swan, readers also get a thorough understanding of how, all too often, Latinx girls are ultimately pitted against each other by family, society, and themselves to become something that they're not, especially when it comes to adhering to standards of beauty and acceptance from white society. That is an incredibly powerful detail to include in a story like this as well as in a genre that is dominated by white female protagonists.

The LGBTQ representation here is also some of the strongest I've ever seen in the genre. Blanca falls in love with a trans boy named Page, who uses both "he" and "she" pronouns to refer to himself, accepting the term "boy" while rejecting the term "girl." "He" and "she" were used throughout the book, especially from the POV of different characters to reflect Page's current mindset, and none of it ever felt forced or confusing. Even when Page is misgendered, it isn't done in a malicious way but rather by characters who are reaching for understanding of what she wants to be called. Page's budding relationship with Blanca is one of the most beautiful things within the story, and I still smile whenever I think about Page's grandmother and Yearling's grandmother also having a live-in relationship.

However, while these two notables are undeniably strong and well-written, the story drags too much, and I feel like some of the prose and character's thoughts are repeated more than I typically like. What happened to Yearling and his eye is delayed too long, to the point where it is anticlimactic when it is finally revealed, and not even the impact of the prose can save it.

Similarly, the rift that occurs between Blanca and Roja is also born from one of my least favorite things in fiction--miscommunication--and while it fits the narrative of Latinx girls and their struggles that McLemore wants to tell, it makes the rest of the book exhausting to get through. "Just talk to each other!" I thought over and over again, but alas, the sisters continued to misread and assume things about each other instead. 

Blanca & Roja is also a novel where nothing much happens. While I didn't expect this book to be action-packed, I hadn't thought it would crawl, either. If you like books that are character-heavy over plot-heavy and you can latch onto these characters, then I'm sure you won't mind the lack of excitement. I'm just not the biggest fan of the choice.

Even the way the curse is broken feels too convenient and anticlimactic for me, but maybe that's because I was too frustrated or bored with everything else that had led to that point. I think I had really wanted to be reading other books while I was reading this one at the time, and that's where those unsatisfied feelings were coming from.

I truly believe this will be a novel that many people will like. I think it's a much-needed addition to the YA genre. Readers are going to love Blanca, Roja, Page, and Yearling, the obstacles they have to overcome, and their journeys to get there. I just wasn't one of them.

Blanca and Roja are sisters cursed to lose one another just as all sisters in their family have since their ancestor made a deal with a swan. One sister will always be taken by the swans on their 15th birthday, until Roja, the younger, seemingly chosen sister, turns 15 and weeks pass without the swans coming for her.

I was really enjoying this for 75% of the book. The writing is beautiful and the story line was interesting, but then it just seemed like it was skipping around a bit too much and I had trouble following what was happening. It felt like I was being rushed through the ending of the story without it being fleshed out. If the ending had kept me interested just like the first 75%, this would have easily been a 4 star read, but as it stands, I’m kind of bummed that I have to rate this a 3 star for me.