Leslye J. Walton

Born with bird wings into a family cursed to be foolish in love, sixteen-year-old Ava delves into her family's past hoping to understand her unusual nature and learn to fit in with her peers, but she is ill-prepared for what she discovers.

Born with the wings of a bird and eager to be accepted by her peers, 16-year old Ava ventures into the world, ill-prepared for what she discovers and naive to the twisted motives of others. The plot contains profanity, sexual situations, and violence.

The strange & beautiful sorrows of Ava Lavender

★★ // a case of good writing that i can easily admire, but a story that i just can’t seem to get into.

Jazelle H

Courtney

This was my first magical realism book and I’m just gonna go cry myself to sleep now. It’s been so long since I’ve read a book with a story that moved so many emotions in me. It was painfully realistic for what the premise was. Such an enchanting metaphor with relatable themes and relationships.

Tori Agnew

Jamieson

“Love makes us such fools.” 


Well the title pretty much says it all. This book was so strange and so beautiful. the writing pretty much immediately drew me in because it's so pretty and probably the lilting, lyrical prose accompanied with the meandering, flowing plot was my favourite thing about this book. 

I get the ending of this book is controversial and I'm firmly in the didn't like it camp. It really took down my enjoyment of this book. But I still really enjoyed this overall. The characters were so beautifully written and I loved the tracking of their lives. I became so attached to these characters and sympathised so much with their hurt, pain, love and growth. Viviane especially I adored, but really all the characters were brilliant. The women especially. I loved that this book showcased such strong relationships between women. 

I do feel like talking about this book too much is a bit pointless since I am literally the last person to read this ever but I think the above pretty much sums it up. Beautiful prose, beautiful characters. This book had such a lovely warm feel about it despite how much tragedy and heartbreak and hurt it dealt with. And I just really loved how slowly it gently this book unfolded, even if everything happening was kind of sad. While I really disliked the end, I still enjoyed 90% of this book anyway. 

I do think this book is incredibly hard to explain though, you really just need to open it and read it and you'll understand what everyone is talking about by "strange and beautiful" straight away. 

trigger warnings for: graphic rape, suicide, graphic depictions of violence, alcoholism

Midori Kobayashi

2/5 stars


I found it ironic that I should be blessed with wings and yet feel so constrained, so trapped. It was because of my condition, I believe, that I noticed life's ironies a bit more often than the average person. I collected them: how love arrived when you least expected it, how someone who said he didn't want to hurt you eventually would.

whimsical and lyrical writing,,, i really loved reading it but then at a lot of times the plot just fell dull and boring and i felt myself quite literally bored. idk. not for me. i tried. i really tried. 


  Book trigger warnings- Death of a queer character, Graphic rape, Emotional abuse, Alcoholism, Suicide, Stalking, Animal abuse

Nicole

I can’t believe I’ve had this book on my shelf for over a year and did not read it! This was...SO GOOD
This is the kind of book that’s gotta have me thinking about it for a long, long time.
The writing was just beautiful and the story of this 3 amazing woman was mesmerizing. 
Reading this book felt like a magical experience to me!
I super recommend it.

Beatriz Pereira

** spoiler alert **
           I knew Nathaniel was going to be trouble. I fucking hate them. And I don't know what I want to believe for the ending. Does she let love make her a fool again and lives? Or does she jumps to her death and the way that she can speak to the ghosts is a proof that she was already crossing that line and how she flew when previously she couldn't. I'm sad.

Anna Troughton 

Beautiful and heartbreaking. I loved the perspective of reading through each generation of Roux woman's heartbreak. This book stirred very strong emotions with me and I know that the ending of this book will leave me on a book hangover for a while trying to comprehend the ending.

Vanessa Arenas

What can I say. I am more of a thriller/mystery kind of book but I decided to change it up a little and give this book a shot....and oh boy am I glad I did! Its perfect! The magical realism in this book is like cuddling under your grandmother's blanket with a cup of hot chocolate on a cold day. The way it is written is beautiful and warming...and the story, wow, what a book! I definitely recommend it. If anyone has recommendations of anything similar to this one, please let me know!

Gisela Ayala 

This was such a paradox of a book. Both lovely and delicate, and gruesome and real. The history of the women in Ava Lavender's life were heart breaking and made me shed a tear here and there. The book was like reading prose and had many touches of magical realism that I love, so much so that I started to believe in some of the situations as if they really did happen. The forbidding through the entire book was killing me! I kept hoping for the best and praying for good outcomes for the characters. Ava Lavender was my favorite character but I also loved Gabe as well, the gentle giant. The book really puts into perspective all that could go wrong when you fall in love, but also, what could go right.

Chloe Bostick

** spoiler alert **
           really not my cup of tea. The biggest issue for me is *SPOILER ALERT AND TW FOR SEXUAL ASSAULT* the main character gets brutally raped and her rapist conveniently dies. He just sets ablaze in the street. No real consequence for him. Rape scenes are hard enough for me to read already but this was just the cherry on top. 

Some other knit picky stuff about this book bothered me, and it just wasn’t an enjoyable read. The plot feels super meandering, could’ve been told in a more.. engaging way? I just had to trudge myself through this one.

Savannah Winchell

So like this book is very beautiful and pleasant
Until one of the most violent rapes I’ve ever read shows up at the end???
It serves no purpose, the book ends shortly after, and it’s so tonally incoherent that I cannot comprehend why the author did this????

elif sinem

Let me get this out of the way:

KILL ME. AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I HATE THIS BOOK

Okay. So I don't feel bad for doing this. Not even the magical realism aspect holds up. I thought I could continue it but turns out I don't even like Ava as a main character. I don't like any of these characters. I don't like the prose, I don't like the way the book is called this but really it should've been named "The Boring Love Dramas Of The Lavender Family." LIKE I JUST DON'T CARE! The girls all so fucking passive! Vivane was the only good one and then all she did was "I wanna love Gabe BUT I'M WAITING FOR JACK I DON'T WANNA CHANGE!!!" Shut up!!!!!!!!! I hate whiny people!!!!

What a waste of time. I couldn't even go masochistic/completionist and finish it. Sorry Pia.

Mia Kern

This book is truly beautiful. There's this sense of melancholy that hangs over the entire book, making you feel both despondent and uplifted. As another reviewer pointed out, each character has a purpose in this story, even if they're highlighted only for a few pages. Each of the main characters felt complex and very real.

The only weakness that I'd found is that, where Walton's narrative prose shines, her dialogue is a little weak. This took very little away from the story, however, as most of it was told in a narrative style anyway.

A truly truly beautiful read. I'd read 500 pages describing paint drying if it were written by Walton. I'd really recommend it to anyone.

Leah Patton

This book was like a feather, not meant to be tied down and trapped but to float. I will share it as long as I love. Also as long as I live but that's less important. "Love makes us such fools."

Emi Gilmore 

4.5 stars. 

I was unsure of this story at first. The lives of Ava's grandmother and mother were unimportant, and all I wanted was to hurry along to Ava's tale. Once I finally arrived to that part of the story, I was hooked into a book that became heartbreaking and beautiful.

Charmaine

It’s as if Leslye thought, I’m going to write the most f*cking beautiful book in the world. And she so exceeded that. In the span of just three hundred pages, she covered the tale of four generations. Each girl with her own longings, love, and heartbreak, and tragedy. Throughout the story, a trail of tragic death follows the characters, yet it is lined with a strand of hope. This whimsically fantastical yet realistic tale took my breath away. What a beautiful book. 💙💙💙

Eleanor Luhar

This book was very different from those I usually read, and definitely unique. It took a little while for me to really get into the story, but once I did I must say I thoroughly enjoyed it. The way it is written is unlike any other I have read - but definitely in a good way.

Maria

как давний почитатель магического реализма, начинала читать с подозрением, но оказалось зря. прекрасная книга, и очень вовремя мне сейчас. ощущенчески больше напоминает сербов, чем латиноамериканцев, пусть и в разы менее сумасшедшая. дождь, смерть, любовь.

Jen Estrella

This story is a gift. The millions of emotions it evokes revolve under the simplest and most complex of themes. This novel tells us about fear, judgment, and love; about love and all its ugly and beautiful forms, the tragedy of falling in love, how difficult of a task it is to fall out of love, and the outcomes of love – denial, foolish acts, numbness, pain, obsession, and ironically, and most importantly – unbearable happiness, when one settles into what can only be deemed true love.

Bonus points: Multiple mentions of french cuisine, baked goods, desserts, etc.

In a nutshell, that was...





Help?

María Belén

This book broke my heart. 
The lyrical prose, the symbolism, the descriptions, the characters, everything is executed perfectly, resulting in a clever, moving, sad, and above all beautiful story about life and love and their joys and sorrows.
Nothing else to say but go and read it and enjoy the perfection that is this book.

tanvi deshpande

Olivera Mitić

I need to say that, sadly, I am slightly disappointed with this book. 

The first half of it was truly everything I ever wanted from literature, but the second half seemed oddly out of place, somehow as if Walton got a bit lost with what she was trying to do, followed by a lack of quirky ideas and plot points. 

Even though the book supposedly is about Ava, I connected to her the least and found her story to be the one I was least interested in. By the time we got to her part I was already invested in the lives of her mother and grandmother and wanted a bit more of that. 

That being said, I did adore this. It is one of the best books I've read this year and I fell in love with so many parts of this story that I can't begin to name them all. The writing style was extraordinary and the way Leslye Walton writes her characters, even minor ones, makes you feel like you do know them. 

The rating I'd give this is somewhere between 4.5 and 5 stars, but I suppose that rounding it up to 5 is just fine. 

I'll avidly be looking forward to eating up anything this author writes in the future. 

PS: It also oddly reminded me of the movie Brooklyn for some reason, and since that one is based off of a book, I am really eager to grab it as soon as possible.

The strange & beautiful sorrows of Ava Lavender

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