How do you live in a world that doesn’t see you for who you are?
I love me some LGBTQ+ books, so of course I wanted to review one for Pride month. But as a cisgender person, gender identity and transgender experiences are a little outside my wheelhouse, so I specifically wanted to read a work of fiction by a trans author and/or featuring trans main characters. This hope brought me to Anne-Marie McLemore’s 2016 young adult fantasy novel, When the Moon Was Ours. The book wasn’t what I expected, which in this case was both a pleasant surprise and a confusing reading experience.
When the Moon Was Ours takes place in a small, conservative town. Miel is found in a water tower as a young child. Sam, a local transgender boy her age, comforts her, and the two become fast friends. Years pass until the two of them are in high school, and they fall in love. Meanwhile, Miel has roses that grow out of her wrists. When they grow big enough, she cuts them from the stem and releases them into the river as an offering to her mother. Rumors circulate around town about Miel’s roses, catching the attention of the Bonner sisters—four girls from a wealthy family who sit at the top of the social hierarchy. The Bonner sisters approach Miel to demand some of her roses, and they torture and threaten her when she refuses. To free herself of the Bonners’ threats—and to free himself from the rigid expectations of the world—Miel and Sam must confront hidden truths about themselves, their family histories, and their hometown.
“But now he was Samir, and Samira was the friend he almost thought he imagined. And she would be a little more imaginary once he and his mother finished changing his name. He wanted to neither forget she existed nor live inside her. She was someone he could not be.”
For the most part, I liked this book. The vibes of the story reminded me of Louis Sachar’s Holes, magical realism mixed in with deep themes, a rugged setting, and a situation where the truth is buried under lies and misunderstandings. As an adult reader, this is one of the few times I couldn’t predict where the story was going to go, and that kept me turning pages late into the night to find out what would happen next. Sam and Miel’s romance, established early in the book, is rich with feeling and mutual love. The author found a great way to take the friends-to-lovers trope and make it their own. And I was fascinated by McLemore’s sources of inspiration, their husband’s experiences with growing up trans as well as McLemore’s take on the myth of La Llorona, and how these inspirations were weaved into the story.
However, what slowed me down is how the prose is seeped in metaphors, to the point where I couldn’t tell what was real and what Miel was imagining. There were times when I thought she was thinking in metaphors (i.e. when talking about the pumpkins turning to crystal) but I didn’t realize it was a literal thing that happened. And I’m still not sure what Miel meant when she said the Bonner sisters took the moon. Was that also literal, or was it figurative? I read the first couple of chapters twice for clarity, but I’m still confused about this point. If you’ve read the book and you know what Miel meant by this, please let me know!
All in all, When the Moon Was Ours is a beautiful novel that deserves the glowing reviews it got. While the prose didn’t do it for me, the plot and characters and themes were more than enough to keep me invested. And if this sounds like the kind of book you’d enjoy, check it out for yourselves and let me know what you think!
Many thanks for reading.
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