This is a difficult book to review because it is marketed as a YA light fantasy and that is not what this book is. 17 year old Xochi is escaping her past and ends up as a governess to Pallas in a very Jane Eyre type situation, complete with troubling romance with an older man. The relationship between these two mars the rest of the novel and makes it difficult to recommend for a YA audience.

This book made me super uncomfortable, and I DNFd it before I even got to the pedophilic romance bit. I'm absolutely terrified of needles so I couldn't handle the detailed descriptions of piercings. From the brief bit I read and the reviews I've seen I think marketing the book as YA was probably not the right call.

This book is a DNF for me. I am squicked out at the "relationship" between 17 year old Xochi and 28 year old LIam the father of Pallas, her charge, and employer. No thank you.

Unfortunately I could not move past the hints of an adult trying to start a relationship with teen girl.

oh, my... this novel had me in all kinds of knots. I am going to start the review by being up front - this is not a book I would recommend to my students, nor will this be in my classroom library. I just don't feel that the romance is appropriate. I understand that it's NOT pedophilia, but it was just too close for comfort. The book is well written, bringing the world to life around me. I was impressed by the easy use of magical elements. I really wanted to enjoy this novel, but the romance, most of all, kept me from fulling being albe to get lost in it. For this reason, I rated it 2 stars.

A beautiful fantasy story that reminds us that you can never really leave your past behind, but that you might not like shape vengeance takes.

Note: My review is based on the (considerable) artistic merits of this novel rather than being a critique of the appropriateness of its content. I will say that, while I understand that this book may be too dark for many YA readers, I believe there’s an equally large group of teens who, having rejected the sanitized version of teen life often seen in the books meant for them, will especially appreciate the trust afforded them by Michelle Ruiz Keil and Soho Teen..

Mesmerizing and hypnotic, All Of Us With Wings thrusts readers into a dreamscape version of San Francisco, highly reminiscent of Francesca Lia Block’s LA. Running from a dark and painful past, Xochi lands a job as a live-in governess to tween Pallas—daughter of rock musicians. Her newfound family, an eclectic group of band members whose relationships are fluid and purposely undefined, is wild and unpredictable—and ultimately healing (after a long, dark and drug-induced emotional journey).

The book is told through multiple points of view, which is difficult to do well but masterfully handled by Michelle Ruiz Keil. I particularly enjoyed the sections told through bookstore cat Peaseblossom’s POV whose desire to protect Pallas is complicated by the aches and pains of a timeworn body, the justified wariness of consulting neighborhood supernatural elders. and the challenge of communicating affectively with humans. His chapters were utterly fascinating!

Akin to an imaginary collaboration between Francesca Lia Block and Ellen Hopkins, All Of Us With Wings may not be for everyone—be sure to check trigger warnings and proceed accordingly—but this novel will undoubtedly garner a throng of diehard devotees and, I predict, cult classic status.

Michelle Ruiz Keil’s YA fantasy debut about love, found family, and healing is an ode to post-punk San Francisco through the eyes of a Mexican-American girl.

Seventeen-year-old Xochi is alone in San Francisco, running from her painful past: the mother who abandoned her, the man who betrayed her. Then one day, she meets Pallas, a precocious twelve-year-old who lives with her rock-star family in one of the city’s storybook Victorians. Xochi accepts a position as Pallas’s live-in governess and quickly finds her place in their household, which is relaxed and happy despite the band's larger-than-life fame.

But on the night of the Vernal Equinox, as a concert afterparty rages in the house below, Xochi and Pallas accidentally summon a pair of ancient creatures devoted to avenging the wrongs of Xochi’s adolescence. She would do anything to preserve her new life, but with the creatures determined to exact vengeance on those who’ve hurt her, no one is safe—not the family she’s chosen, nor the one she left behind.

This book was nothing like what the above synopsis states. It mostly revolves around the romance which is between the main character (17yo) and the father of the child she's supposed to nanny (28-29yo). This is so not okay and I've since learned that this is an #ownvoices story, but that does not excuse the fact that statutory rape was romanticized in this beyond belief. The other thing I had issue with is that there are NO trigger warnings for what this book contained. I mean, I understand my copy is an ARC but trigger warnings are so necessary, especially when the synopsis gives no hint as to what the book actually contains.

*Book received from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

Thanks to the publisher, author, and Netgalley for this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

So I'm super behind with my reading which is why I'm reviewing this book over a month after publication, but oh well. This book hooked me from the beginning with the interesting characters, the magical realism, and the varied POV's used to tell the story. While I loved this title I would recommend reading the author's note before reading the book because it does deal with heavier topics -- addiction and abuse being the most prevalent.

I would definitely recommend this book to readers who are looking for a title that deals with growing up but aren't quite ready to let go of the fantasy titles.

This was almost a DNF. The relationship between a CHILD and a much older man was uncomfortable. The drug use was uncomfortable and unsettling. Writing about a dysfunctional relationship I understand, but to my understanding this was marketed as YA, and feels VERY INAPPROPRIATE for a YA reader.

I'm finding this impossible to rate because I truly believe it's not YA. 👀This one is controversial in the YA community and I really want to acknowledge everyone's concerns. I don't think this is a "role model" book, but I also don't think it's meant to be. I also read an eARC which didn't have the author's note (my friend showed me the author's note from her finished copy) and it feels very very crucial to read that before the book. It lists trigger warnings and explains just how deeply an #ownvoices it story is: from the trauma and life experiences to the representation of what it is to be mixed race.

First off: It's not YA.
I think marketing it as YA is a huge injustice to the book itself. Look I remember seeing it for the first time and thinking (a) the cover is so cute and pretty! and (b) the story sounds super fun.

... it is not a "fun" book. It tackles a lot of very dark content from sexual assault, childhood abuse and neglect, to hard drugs usage. There are scenes in strip clubs, underage characters do heroin, it infers that young girls are being sexually trafficked/abused, casual usage the c-word, and there are macabre piercings etc. Not to mention there is romance/lust between Xochi (17yo) and the father of the kid she's nannying (he's 28). That's illegal and pedophilic. But more on that soon.

I am not saying that teens shouldn't/can't read this kind of content. I suspect the author lived this life as a teen and I know thousands of other teens have this as their reality. Hence I don't want to stomp in here from my place of privilege and crow "bUT THINK OF THE CHILDREN." The children can think for themselves. But I still call it adult lit because when you go into YA there are boundaries and rules, even if it makes things less-than-true to real life. This just broke so many YA stylistic rules: even from having the entire cast be adults, quite a few adult POVs, and whenever the 12yo narrated it was really just as a lens to see the adults' lives. It was so very adult-centric. And you can have teen narrators in adult books alright. No one is calling Game of Thrones, where Rob is 16 in book one and Arya is 10 (and they're the main narrators) YA or middle grade. It's about content, themes, and expectations and delivery.

I don't think teens will read this and go "oh so it's normal to go out and do heroin" but when you go in expecting YA and get adult, you're not ready for the angle it's taking.


Secondly: Let's talk about the "romance".
A few reviewers have expressed horror and disgust at the romance being between the 17yo and the 28yo and I am right there with you. For me, that's inherently problematic and I don't believe the ending firmly took that angle enough. I don't think the book was condoning it or calling it exemplary behaviour....but it felt romanticised. Which is not okay.

What made it worse though was that Leviticus (the 29yo) was constantly talking about HOW Xochi was so young. He infantilised her in one breath, then 2 seconds later he was justifying that she was mature for her age and so maybe being attracted to her wasn't wrong. Um...matey, that's such predatory thinking it really was disgusting. But at the same time he was, presented, as this very nice guy. He's a rockstar who doesn't like the fame. He was very soft and gentle to his family, very careful to hide his attraction to Xochi at first. But every time we were in his POV, it was this string of justifications for him lusting after a 17yo. He even references Lolita and talks about how it's a power imbalance to have a huge age gap. Another character makes a comment that Leviticus "usually" goes for girls who are a lot younger. It was consensual; Xochi was lusting after him too. But that doesn't make it okay!

Also they kept saying "We need to put Pallas first." As in, the 12yo that Xochi is a governess for. And then in the next breath they were doing exactly the opposite of that. 🙄

What I wish: was that Leviticus could've been an older brother of Pallas or something. (Instead of her dad.) Maybe 20 or 21 making that age-gap a bit worrisome but nowhere NEAR this level of predatory/pedophile. Because honestly there were so many parts of the book where I was like "wow this is important and I like this book" but I CAN'T get passed how wrong the romance was. Take out the romance and I'd have really liked the story.


Three: there was magical realism which was great but also confusing.
Xochi and Pallas do this "fake" summoning but it actually works and they end up bringing forth these "waterbaby" spirits, some kind of fey, who then become attached to Xochi and decide to avenger her. And she's had a Traumatic childhood so like, heck, they have a lot to work on. However she doesn't know that's what's happening. She was unconscious (DRUNK; WHILE BABYSITTING) when they came.

PSA: Xochi is actually a terrible governess and while Pallas is loved intensely by the whole family...she's still super neglected.

I did think this magical aspect was going to be more, but it was less. The neighbourhood CAT actually narrated most of what was happening with the magical part. My eARC's formatting wasn't particularly great either, so a lot of chapters were confusing with paragraphs running together. Sometimes the style, particularly for the magical parts, was really ethereal and I honestly had no idea what was happening. (Kinda like are the characters having an acid trip right now 😳is the reader joining them. helpity help.)


Four: Found Family aka a trope I DO so enjoy.
Pallas' family is this intensely famous rockband who all live together in an extravagant house and they're basically the crazy, messed-up found-family I want to read about. (Except there were a lot of band members and I couldn't keep them straight because they didn't have that much page time to develop.) But they were weird and sort of wonderful and I get why Xochi was intoxicated with them and in love.

Pallas is basically this genius precocious 12yo who knits and discusses philosophy and is terrified of making friends her own age. She's a total sweetie, and like I said: they love her. BUT THEY NEGLECT HER SO BAD. Xochi spends next to no time actually taking care of Pallas so also...how did you get hired, dear?

I also loved the diversity of the family; lots of POC characters, literally no one was straight, there were a lot of open or polyam relationships. They were enigmatic and mystical and artists. They were also somehow intensely loving and also selfish. Aka: they were flawed, imperfect and problematic. But that was the point, too?

I ended up really liking Kylen, who was basically the Hufflepuff family attack dog. (Also psychic and gay.) I couldn't even name the other band members lmao they did not have much development.

So a book full of problematic characters who sometimes admit to it and sometimes don't? That's fair to write. It felt like the author wasn't tell you who was good vs bad. Rather leaving it up to you to decide.


Five: This is a story about healing.
Which is important and I really felt the ache through it; especially with Xochi coming to admit that she'd been raped (instead of telling herself it had been consensual just because she never spoke) and coming face to face with a lot of past demons where she could decide to forgive or at least to get closure for.

It's a story of messy and horrifying happenings, sometimes on page and sometimes not. It's an uncomfortable story that requires a lot of thought and unpacking. It's really easy to say "nope nope" because of the amount of problematic content. But I still wonder if that's not just the POINT here. But when it's YA, you do need some calling outs of things (ie: the pedophile romance) instead of kind of half/and/half condemning it. Confusingly, it called out so much other stuff too. Racism and abuse and casual sexism. It had so many themes of empowerment and justice and healing.

Unfortunately, despite the book being set in my own city (San Francisco) and focusing on diverse characters, I really couldn't get into it. I was uncomfortable with all the drug usage in this YA novel and all the melodrama of it. At some point, the 17 yo protagonist, Xochi, kisses a man much older than her, has cocaine, smokes cigarettes, drinks whiskey, and kisses a woman much older than her, all in the span of like a half-hour. Which, you know, fine, but the book overall was also, to my taste, underwhelmingly boring and way overfocused on relationships. Supposedly, there is also a magic realism or fantasy element to it but it was completely overshadowed by Xochi's crush on the father of the 12-old girl she is the governess of. He, in turn, I'd creepily grooming her to be his lover, which is a statutory rape, but I guess the author doesn't care for the message she sends? I kept waiting for the magic to come, but it never did, so I DNF'd it at 40% after two months of trying to force myself to read it. I liked that one of the points of view was from a cat (a bookstore cat!), and I was very excited about that - again, being a bookseller in SF and a cat person - but even that couldn't save the novel for me. First DNF this year for me, and I've read 50 books so far.

I discarded this ARC after reading this review recently: https://twitter.com/bostonsbooks/status/1145004297219911686?s=21

As a bookseller who works in a store that deals largely with educators and school boards, there is no way that I can recommend this book to our customers.

xochi is a kid! a seventeen-year-old girl! and these adults are giving her drugs, alcohol, free tongue piercings, and propositioning her for sex if not actually acting on their desires, and that's not even all. it's fucking gross.

grossest of all is that the "romance" (barf) is between xochi and her 28-year-old employer. xochi is literally hired to babysit his 12-year-old kid and he's trying to fuck her? come on man.

the writing is gorgeous but the content is so fucked up. this doesn't read as a young adult book at all. it should be marketed for adults. i'd hate if some teenager read this and thought that all this risky behavior was okay.

Rating: 3.5 stars

The language is very flowy and dreamy. This makes it almost like reading a dream, a dream that at some times feels like a recap of life and at others like a fever dream where everything's a bit weird.
There's a lot of strange things in this book, like the POV from the family cat, and at times it just made me feel a bit lost. For instance, if I hadn't read the prompt before I started the book the first few chapters would have been so confusing. There's really not a lot of establishment of who Xochi and Pallas was until a bit into the story. It made almost want to stop reading. But then everything started to get mot clear as the narrative became more focused and I finally felt that I could keep up with the story.

At times the story was a bit too much for me but there's no denying it was a good look into a bizarre world of fame and rock stars. It shows the reader a place where there's a lot of people and not really any rules, they're just free to do what they like. Even though I found the magical elements of the story a bit too out there and most of the characters were horrible people, I really liked the main characters.
I couldn't help but to just want to grab Pallas and Xochi out of that house and get them somewhere else. I felt so sorry for both of them. Pallas I loved from the very first chapter of hers, she's just such a sweet and smart kid that getting traumatized by bad parents. It took a bit longer for me to warm up to Xochi but eventually I felt fondly of her too. I really love the relationship between the two of them. One such thing is the stability they offer each other, it's something they seem to lack everywhere else.

The story is weird and I'm not really liking the story it tells, but it's a very well written book nonetheless. The author has put down effort into her work and it shows, I mean even though I didn't really understand the cat bits of the story they were good in a narrative stand point. The characters felt real, why I had so strong emotional feelings towards them - both good and bad. So it's a good book but it's just not my cup of tea.

This is a hard one to review. There were lots of things to like about this book, but there were also some very disturbing things as well. So let’s break it down into likes and dislikes.

Likes:
The main characters were very well done. They were all flawed, but at their hearts most of them were good people. I really liked Pallas and Xochi. They had very honest voices. The adults around them for the most part were good too.
Peasblossom, he is a cat. Loved his part in the story and his narration was often a light in some pretty dark times.
The magical creatures, fey? not ever really sure what they were, but they were amazing.
Even though this book is set in the 80/90’s you don’t really feel like it is. It could take place at anytime. There are only subtle suggestions of the time period, which was a nice change.
The diverse cast of characters, very appropriate for a book set in San Francisco.
Even though Xochi and her mother had a difficult relationship, Xochi is able to have good relationships with other adults.
The writing was amazing, hard to believe this was a debut. There were many times I had trouble putting the book down.
Dislikes:
It was a hard book to get into. The first 50 or so pages were confusing. You are just plopped down into this house of people that you don’t really know yet and are never really introduced to. It isn’t until you get to know them a bit better that you start to enjoy the book.
The creatures were not in the story as much as they could have been. Their role and who/what exactly they were was not explained well.
There is a lot of drug use, drinking and inappropriate behavior on the part of the adults in the family. They often took Xochi to wild parties where she got herself into some pretty bad situations.
The relationship between Xochi and Leviticus, Pallas’s dad. I am a firm believer in love not having age boundaries, as long as they are both consenting adults, but given Xochi’s past, this tiptoed around predation. I was also troubled by everyone ending up ok with them together.
I am really struggling with the age appropriateness of this book. It is being promoted as YA, but I can’t see myself recommending it to anyone under 18.
Even with some of it’s flaws this was still a really good book. Very raw and difficult at times, but good.

I'm not quite sure how to lay out my thoughts on this book. Is it good? Yes, yes it is, but it's also... different. I'm not quite sure how to describe the writing style- the flow of the words on the page and dipping back and forth between the present and the memories of the different characters took a little getting used to. It is beautifully written, but the style did make it a little difficult for me to submerge myself in. It took a little more processing and I had to read a bit slower than I normally do in order to fully absorb all the goings on. The story is also strange- in that it takes place in the not so distant past, and there's the concept of "free love' and drugs and the confusion that goes with that. Other than that, and the fact that the ending seemed rather abrupt, this was a very very good book. I would definitely recommend it to others as a worthwhile read. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for giving me a chance to read and review this book!

Running from her painful past, Xochi ends up in San Francisco where she soon befriends the precocious twelve year-old, Pallas. After meeting the family unit/band that Pallas’ parents are members of, Xochi quickly falls into the role of governess. Surrounded by free love, drugs, and the rock n’ roll life, Xochi falls into some messy situations trying to heal the wounds of her past and carve a path forward.

I really wanted to like this book. I loved the promise of Fae Folk conjured out of a bathtub, and who doesn’t love a solid coming of age story? I loved the Mexican-American representation, but it just didn’t hook me the way I’d hoped, however. I really wish there had been more fantasy elements and way less romance.

While I really enjoyed the polyamorous aspects of the band’s home life and how the author addressed the human emotions of jealousy even among people who are trying their best to be open and loving, I did not at all enjoy the main romantic plot. It skeeved me out a little bit, and I just couldn’t get past it.

I loved Pallas. I loved Bubbles. My heart went out to Xochi coming to terms with past trauma and trying to build a new life from nothing at such a young age. I’d love to revisit these characters in five or six years, maybe as Pallas is getting ready to start college and more explorations of her and Xochi’s witchy abilities. I’d love to seem them as more equal friends, and I’d like to see the romance fizzle out and find out what’s next in the lives of these characters.

This one is out on Tuesday, and it’s not that I don’t recommend it. I may not be the audience for this book, and you should take my words with that grain of salt, because I think it has a solid audience, an audience who will fully identify with many or all of the characters in this book. Also friendly reminder. White girl reviewing. Don’t take my word. Find some other reviewers with some of these experiences or who can view the plot from a different lens. Do be warned, though, it’s got some trigger warnings for sexual assault and unhealthy relationships, drugs, and it’s more real-life messy and not much fantasy except for how it relates to real trauma.

At times it was difficult to remember how old any of these characters were, with the "elders" being under 30 and the youngest merely 12 yet wise beyond her years. Taking place in San Fransisco, near the Haight, <i>and</i> featuring a rock band, there are drugs and complicated sexual relationships and body modification and a general sense that there's something different going on here. That something different is two waterbabies, drawn to Xochi by her ritual spell at the Equinox party held in the mansion she's staying in while being the governess to Pallas (the 12-year-old). I wish there'd been something more about Levi's family, perhaps a meeting with a sibling. On the other hand, there's Peaseblossom and while I usually am not a huge fan of animal stories Peas is such a plus that there's an entire star just for him.

eARC provided by publisher.

This magical YA will appeal to a wide variety of young readers. Filled with captivating characters and creatures, readers will be completely engaged in Xochi’s story. Highly recommended for classrooms looking for modern examples of magical realism.