Wild Beauty
A Novel
349 pages · Released Oct 3, 2017 · Feiwel & Friends
Content report card
Wild Beauty parent’s guide: what’s inside
Violence
Language
LGBTQ+ themes
Substance use
What it offers
Educational value
A note for parents
Wild Beauty is a lyrical magical-realism romance aimed at young adults, featuring a mysterious love story set in an enchanted garden with a dark family curse. The novel explores themes of love, family legacy, and self-discovery through beautiful prose and folklore elements, but contains some mature romantic tension and the psychological weight of the curse's tragic consequences. While not graphically violent or explicit, the underlying premise—that lovers mysteriously vanish—creates a sense of dread appropriate for older teens rather than middle-grade readers.
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From the publisher
In Wild Beauty, acclaimed YA author Anna-Marie McLemore introduces a spellbinding setting and two characters who are drawn together by fate—and pulled apart by reality. Love grows such strange things. For nearly a century, the Nomeolvides women have tended the grounds of La Pradera, the lush estate gardens that enchant... In Wild Beauty, acclaimed YA author Anna-Marie McLemore introduces a spellbinding setting and two characters who are drawn together by fate—and pulled apart by reality. Love grows such strange things. For nearly a century, the Nomeolvides women have tended the grounds of La Pradera, the lush estate gardens that enchant guests from around the world. They’ve also hidden a tragic legacy: if they fall in love too deeply, their lovers vanish. But then, after generations of vanishings, a strange boy appears in the gardens. The boy is a mystery to Estrella, the Nomeolvides girl who finds him, and to her family, but he’s even more a mystery to himself; he knows nothing more about who he is or where he came from than his first name. As Estrella tries to help Fel piece together his unknown past, La Pradera leads them to secrets as dangerous as they are magical in this stunning exploration of love, loss, and family. Anna-Marie McLemore's debut novel The Weight of Feathers garnered fabulous reviews and was a finalist for the prestigious YALSA Morris Award, and her second novel, When the Moon was Ours, was longlisted for the 2016 National Book Award for Young People's Literature. Praise for Wild Beauty: “No one does magical realism quite like McLemore, and this third novel, laced with slow-burning suspense, folklore, romance, and spun together with exquisite, luxuriant prose, proves it. . . . Sheer magic: fierce, bright, and blazing with possibility.” —Booklist, starred review "A solid, must-have addition to McLemore’s growing body of work, this fantastical tale will delight her fans and entice a new audience." —School Library Journal, starred review
Shelved under
- Fiction
- Magic
- Love
- Juvenile fiction
- Family life
- Romance fiction
- Families
- Gardens
- Children's fiction
- Gardens, fiction
- Magic, fiction
- Family life, fiction
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ISBN 9781250124562 · Feiwel & Friends