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A review by popthebutterfly
All of Us with Wings by Michelle Ruiz Keil
1.0
Disclaimer: I bought this book but I regret it. @bookofthemonth and @sohopress, do better next time to select books that don’t present awful messages to young impressionable minds.
Book: All of Us With Wings
Author: Michelle Ruiz Keil
Book Series: Standalone (thank god)
Rating: 1/5
Diversity: Mexican-American main character
Publication Date: June 18, 2019
Genre: YA Magical Realism
Recommended Age: 18+ (drug use (heroin, cocaine, etc), sexual grooming, statutory rape and rape TW, underage relationship presented in a positive light (ew))
Publisher: Soho Press
Pages: 360
Amazon Link
Synopsis: 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.
Review: I read the whole of this book and I’m still rating it a 1/5. This book has been getting a lot of hate for “pedophilia” and while that is not the right term, there is still some very wrong things in this book. It’s romantizing statutory rape and it presents this “relationship” as normal when it’s controlling and sets kids to be victims of rape. The love interest is basically grooming the character throughout the novel and it’s fetishizing a relationship between a nanny (17) and a “lonely father” (29). I can’t imagine how this got past all of the revisions and stuff it takes to get a novel published. Did no one look at this book and think how wrong it was, how wrong the message it was sending to young children was? When you publish YA you have a responsibility to make sure stuff like this doesn’t get out there. It’s another thing when it presents a positive message about it versus a negative message, and this presents this type of relationship in a positive light. And as much as the book is beautiful (the prose is awesome and the plot besides the sexual grooming is good), the message it presents makes the whole book basic trash. As someone who has trained in a rape crisis center and has studied the psychology behind criminals who do this and has many friends and family members who have went through varying degrees of this, I can’t tell you enough how you need to keep this away from anyone under the age of 18.
Verdict: Do not buy this book.
Book: All of Us With Wings
Author: Michelle Ruiz Keil
Book Series: Standalone (thank god)
Rating: 1/5
Diversity: Mexican-American main character
Publication Date: June 18, 2019
Genre: YA Magical Realism
Recommended Age: 18+ (drug use (heroin, cocaine, etc), sexual grooming, statutory rape and rape TW, underage relationship presented in a positive light (ew))
Publisher: Soho Press
Pages: 360
Amazon Link
Synopsis: 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.
Review: I read the whole of this book and I’m still rating it a 1/5. This book has been getting a lot of hate for “pedophilia” and while that is not the right term, there is still some very wrong things in this book. It’s romantizing statutory rape and it presents this “relationship” as normal when it’s controlling and sets kids to be victims of rape. The love interest is basically grooming the character throughout the novel and it’s fetishizing a relationship between a nanny (17) and a “lonely father” (29). I can’t imagine how this got past all of the revisions and stuff it takes to get a novel published. Did no one look at this book and think how wrong it was, how wrong the message it was sending to young children was? When you publish YA you have a responsibility to make sure stuff like this doesn’t get out there. It’s another thing when it presents a positive message about it versus a negative message, and this presents this type of relationship in a positive light. And as much as the book is beautiful (the prose is awesome and the plot besides the sexual grooming is good), the message it presents makes the whole book basic trash. As someone who has trained in a rape crisis center and has studied the psychology behind criminals who do this and has many friends and family members who have went through varying degrees of this, I can’t tell you enough how you need to keep this away from anyone under the age of 18.
Verdict: Do not buy this book.