Title: The Astonishing Color of After
Author: Emily X. R. Pan
Genre: Ya fantasty/magical realism
Time Magazine recently listed its top 100 YA books of all-time. It’s not a list I entirely agree with. How can you have a list of YA books without Harry Potter? That series is one of the most influential book series of all-time, not just in the YA world. But, some really great books are on this list. A lot of recently published books made the cut. Some I’ve read from the list that I really enjoyed include Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, I’ll Give You the Sun, Everything, Everything, Six of Crows, The Sun is Also a Star, The Hate U Give, Dear Martin, Allegedly, Long Way Down, The 57 Bus: A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives, and With the Fire on High. Of course, I turned the list into a spreadsheet and decided to knock some off the list. I started here, for no particular reason. And although this book uses a trope I despise, I thought it was still a good read.
From Goodreads: Leigh Chen Sanders is absolutely certain about one thing: When her mother died by suicide, she turned into a bird.
Leigh, who is half Asian and half white, travels to Taiwan to meet her maternal grandparents for the first time. There, she is determined to find her mother, the bird. In her search, she winds up chasing after ghosts, uncovering family secrets, and forging a new relationship with her grandparents. And as she grieves, she must try to reconcile the fact that on the same day she kissed her best friend and longtime secret crush, Axel, her mother was taking her own life.
Alternating between real and magic, past and present, friendship and romance, hope and despair, The Astonishing Color of After is a novel about finding oneself through family history, art, grief, and love.
The lack of honesty about their feelings between Axel and Leigh is really annoying. I just hate that trope in writing so much. But the rest of the book is really beautiful. Leigh and her father and lost at sea after the suicide. Leigh tries to find footing by meeting her Taiwanese grandparents. As her mother’s past is slowly revealed, Leigh realizes the family has more secrets than she knows what to do with. But Leigh’s journey is why you read the book. The magical realism aspect of the book is far-fetched, but, that’s the point of MR. Leigh sees memories of her family and is slowly coming to terms with who her mother is. I really did enjoy this book, silly trope aside, and I think it will speak to a lot of young people.
Pleasant Nights 