Genre: Fairytale (?), Historical (?) Fantasy (?) How the heck do you classify this? It could have been so good, but instead it was only mediocre.The Strange and Beautiful Sorrow of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton It’s frustrating to see a lot of potential that doesn’t go anywhere, and that’s exactly what I feel about this. The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender shows a lot of promise, and Walton’s writing style is a perfect fit for the magical realism genre, but this book did not come together like it could have. I liked pretty much every other character more than I liked Ava-probably because every other characters had more depth of personality than Ava did. Even though she was the narrator, I hardly felt her presence in the book. Leslye Walton’s debut shows promise for her continued career, and I can see myself picking up another of her novels in the future, but the story itself was too bland for me, especially where Ava was considered.
I don’t deny that this book is well-written and unique, even as far as magical realism goes. The ending was all about Ava’s empowerment and coming of age, but the steps to that point were dull for me, even with the presence of magical tendencies. Instead we got an extremely bland romance and a rushed confrontation with a poorly developed antagonist. After all the things that had happened to her mother and grandmother, I was expecting something of equal or greater value.
So maybe 40 percent of The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender is actually concerned with Ava’s story.Īlso bothersome for me was how nondescript Ava’s story is. The first half of the book chronicles the lives of Ava’s mother and grandmother, and then a good section after the halfway point awkwardly transitions from Ava’s foremothers to the “protagonist” itself.
I think what most bothered me about this book was that for a novel supposedly about Ava Lavender, it wasn’t really about Ava Lavender. The truth, however, lies somewhere in between. At best, I was vaguely pleased with this at worst, completely ambivalent. I began reading The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender expecting to enjoy myself, but maybe in this case, my expectation was off. These are books that bend the rules and invite curious readers to wield their imaginations-the books that leave a lingering taste of beauty behind. By and large, I’ve had great success with magical realism.
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