Book: The Weight of Feathers
Author: Anna Marie-McLemore
Published: September 15, 2015
Rating: ★★★★★
For twenty years, the Palomas and the Corbeaus have been rivals and enemies, locked in an escalating feud for over a generation. Both families make their living as traveling performers in competing shows—the Palomas swimming in mermaid exhibitions, the Corbeaus, former tightrope walkers, performing in the tallest trees they can find.
Lace Paloma may be new to her family’s show, but she knows as well as anyone that the Corbeaus are pure magia negra, black magic from the devil himself. Simply touching one could mean death, and she’s been taught from birth to keep away. But when disaster strikes the small town where both families are performing, it’s a Corbeau boy, Cluck, who saves Lace’s life. And his touch immerses her in the world of the Corbeaus, where falling for him could turn his own family against him, and one misstep can be just as dangerous on the ground as it is in the trees.

I love McLemore’s style of writing and their ability to craft a beautiful, heartfelt story, so I went into this book with high expectations. That’s always a slightly scary thing to do because sometimes if your expectations are too high there is no way for a book to reach them (I find that happens often to me when I try reading a hyped up book). Thankfully, TWoF absolutely blew me away! It pulled me in right with the first sentence and didn’t let me go until I finished reading the last page.

The Good:

• The prose was stunningly beautiful, the sentences crafted to paint each scene in a magical, dreamy light. Even mundane experiences felt other worldly. Sometimes I had to reread sentences just because I loved them so much.
• Their writing also allowed the magical realism parts of the story to thrive and not seem weird.
• The dual point of view that is book had was so important because we were able to learn each family’s side of the story of the history between them, and we could see the ways in which their versions intersected and also diverged.
• We also were able to step back as readers and see the ways in which the family’s created their own truths in order to suit their own needs, and you could also see the ways in which the families were wrong and manipulative to their own family members.
• Lace and Cluck’s relationship was so beautiful! It melted my heart. I really loved seeing how much they cared about each other.
•  I also enjoyed seeing the different family dynamics and how their family’s interacted with them. It broke my heart to see how these two beautiful characters were mistreated by their families, but at the same time, it made Lace and Cluck’s relationship all the more sweeter because they found solace within each other.
• There was so much great tension all throughout this book! There’s the tension between the families and within the families themselves. And then there are also so many secrets and lies that created even more tension. It was seriously so delicious to read!  As you begin to see these different tensions layer on to each other you can feel them building up and you just know it’s going to explode at some point and it made me keep turning the pages, desperate to find out if it was going to end up okay.