The Mirror Season
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
"An unforgettable story of trauma and healing, told in achingly beautiful prose with great tenderness and care." —#1 New York Times-bestselling author Karen M. McManus
When two teens discover that they were both sexually assaulted at the same party, they develop a cautious friendship through her family’s possibly-magical pastelería, his secret forest of otherworldly trees, and the swallows returning to their hometown, in Anna-Marie McLemore's The Mirror Season.
Graciela Cristales’ whole world changes after she and a boy she barely knows are assaulted at the same party. She loses her gift for making enchanted pan dulce. Neighborhood trees vanish overnight, while mirrored glass appears, bringing reckless magic with it. And Ciela is haunted by what happened to her, and what happened to the boy whose name she never learned.
But when the boy, Lock, shows up at Ciela’s school, he has no memory of that night, and no clue that a single piece of mirrored glass is taking his life apart. Ciela decides to help him, which means hiding the truth about that night. Because Ciela knows who assaulted her, and him. And she knows that her survival, and his, depend on no one finding out what really happened.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Folding in elements of Andersen's "The Snow Queen," McLemore (Dark and Deepest Red) whips up a magical realist tale as spellbinding as the pan dulce creations described within this novel's pages. Known as the pastry witch of San Juan Capistrano, queer Mexican American teen Graciela "Ciela" Cristales works at her family's pastelería and has inherited her late bisabuela's ability to "know what bread or sweet would leaven the heart of anyone she met." After Ciela and a visiting "boy in plaid flannel" are both sexually assaulted at the same party, however, her gift disappears—and a strange season begins in which trees vanish overnight and objects suddenly turn into magical mirrored glass. But when the boy from that night, Lock Thomas, unexpectedly enrolls at Ciela's high school several months later, with no memory of his assault, Ciela must decide whether to reveal what she knows or keep the truth to herself. With haunting prose and sharp insight, McLemore expertly combines the piquant with the sweet ("I dream of pale fingers pulling me apart like sugar dough"), exposing the fragility and complexity of Ciela and Lock's hearts post-assault with due consideration and care. Ages 13–up.
