The Mirror Season by Anna-Marie McLemore (audiobook)

genre: magical realism, young adult

Graciela knows exactly where her heart belongs - inside her family’s warm panadería, where she prepares and bakes the pan dolce they are known for. Her practically magical gift for knowing what each costumer really wants makes the panadería makes a safe haven. But the real world isn’t so safe for Graciela, who in one horrific night is the victim of a sexual assault - at the same time as as someone else. And that someone else is a new boy whom Graciela slowly gets to know all while hiding the truth of her assault. When she realizes her gift is in jeopardy and the world around her starts shifting in strange ways, Graciela knows it must be linked to what happened to her - but what can she even do about it when hollowness is all that’s left?

Woah. This is a deep book dealing with a heavy subject. The speculative vibe here is more of the magical realism kind, the kind where trees can turn to glass and hearts can be splintered in ways both real and fantastical. The sensitive nature of the subject is handled with such care - these teens feel real, their worries and reactions and desperation to know how to fix everything that’s wrong with their world. While it really is a terrifying and uncomfortable subject, the author uses a firm hand while blurring the line between how a traumatic sexual assault can truly change a person and the metaphorical damage that’s done when our choices are stolen from us. I liked Graciela, I liked her journey to healing and the way she eventually dares to feel like maybe she deserves happiness again. I liked the flair of the bakery and its rainbow of pastries, even though sometimes descriptions Graciela's gift felt a bit repetitive and overdone, I still liked the magic of it.

I’d be cautious in recommending it to younger teens because of the subject matter - there is detail and language about sexual acts and body parts (LOTS of genitalia language) here that might bother some readers. However, as a piece of literature, as an exploration of the spectrum of sexuality, as a roadmap to managing Trauma, as a story of a girl who is broken into pieces but is stronger than she thinks -
who can also guess the pan dolce that will be perfect for you - it deserves a place on the shelf.

littlest bird challenge, fiction21, lgbtq, magical realism, california, mexican interest

completed Jan 3