Fairytale GOODNESS | Blanca y Roja, AM McLemore | Book Review | Overbooked [CC]

Welcome back to dead book reviews I’m Judith and 
you’re watching another episode of overbooked here  
on the channel, the series where I talk about 
every single book on my shelves, because after  
this, I might just turn into a swan. I’m still 
losing my voice, but I’m armed with medicine.  
And we’re going to talk about Blanca Y Roja. 
Let’s talk about it. I bought this book myself.  
Regardless of where books come from, nobody’s 
paying me to talk about books and all opinions  
are my own. I’m also going to keep this as spoiler 
free as humanly possible though, if you do want to  
go in doing absolutely nothing, click away. Now. 
I will also link the story graph. If you want to  
find any content warnings, there are some 
that do apply. I would look for those down  
below Blanca y Roja, originally released in 2018. 
And I would describe it as a ya magical realism  
fairy tale retelling of sorts, AM McLemore, if 
you don’t know is a non binary Latine author who  
has written all sorts of stuff, most of which 
we are talking about in the channel in this  
series. So if you want to go back and watch, 
I have three previous videos of their works,  
and also a lot more to come. So be sure to 
subscribe if you don’t want to miss them.  
So this is sort of a rose red kind of story and 
that we have the Del Cisne girls, two

sisters,
one of whom is called Blanca and one of whom
is called Roja. And this family has a curse,
wherein every single time every single generation
two girls will turn into swans, or rather,
Two girls, one of them will turn into a swan,
the other one will not. And in this case,
we have these two sisters, and everyone assumes
that Blanca is going to not turn into a swan and
Roja will because of their personalities. And
it is sort of about the girls trying to fight
nature, not nature, destiny, destiny that
will do and it’s also a romance because of
course it is. And it is all about exploring
identity and your place in your community.
And all of the above. My first reason you should
read this book is I think it’s a really lovely
depiction of Sisters of siblings, which I very
much enjoy. I never had a sister growing up,
I have an older brother, but that’s it. And
I always wanted one. And so I get a lot of
satisfaction reading books about sisters, I can’t
speak to how realistic the sisterly relationship
is, but it is there. And I actually really enjoy
their dynamic. I like the idea of these two
children who are brought up to believe one
thing about themselves and still choosing
to challenge that. And I like that the way
that AM McLemore plays off either of them
hiding things from the other and that kind of
thing. I think it works really, really well.
And it creates tension without being too Oh, for
goodness sake, just talk to each other, which is
a pet peeve of mine. And I think the reason that
manages to work is because they’re set up in this
family this life where everything is just assumed
that it’s going to happen in a certain way.
And I like that as a kind of sort of
almost queer narrative within that of
you believe your life is going to go one way.
So you fight for it to go the way that everyone
thinks it’s going to go. And if it doesn’t, it
sort of tears everything apart. I think that’s
very interesting. Just saying, I mentioned the
prose in every single one of these books, I think,
in this case, I like it because it manages to
feel quite a modern story. We’re in a world
without mobile phones, but it’s not the past there
are cars and so such and well is the past then.
It’s not. It’s not a period piece. There we go.
And I think that that the fairy tale element of it
really works with this kind of flowery prose, but
it manages to stay modern enough. It doesn’t feel
super dated. It doesn’t feel like you know, when
you can read a book and you can tell it’s trying
to be a fairy tale. This feels more like it’s
drawing on the ideas of fairy tales, which is what
I much prefer in this instance, I’ve just written
emotional damage as my next pro. I think the story
is just beautiful. It is probably my favorite plot
line of all the AM McLemore books, because it just
it’s so heart wrenching in so many different
ways. And there isn’t really an antagonist,
arguably the swans, but even then that’s
complicated. Can a swan have moral feelings
about one thing or another? I don’t know
something about this book really captured my
I don’t even know what it is that that
desire to help other people empathy,
maybe I don’t, I don’t know. And that that
self sacrifice element that this book has.
It’s just really beautiful. And a lot of the kind
of, I guess it’s not even b plot but you might
describe it as that where we have these two other
characters, we have Yearling and Page who are
exploring their own identities and finding
themselves in the woods and all of this stuff,
their plotline just really, really gorgeous
again, and just page is, one of my favorite
characters AM McLemore has ever written. And I
love them, and they just want I just want them to
be happy. I just want all the characters in this
to be happy. So yes, it is it is heartbreaking,
but in the best way kind of similar to when the
moon was ours where there is this real sense
of catharsis in the book, I will say that this
does take a minute or so to warm up it takes a
little while to get into the meat of the book.
I think that’s because there’s quite a lot of
not even setup of world building but quite a lot
of setup of events before you can really jump
into the big things that are going on in the story
and you really need to see these characters where
they are first. I think that it’s worth powering
through that first bit because the the latter half
of the book is so strong but if you’re looking for
a book where from the off, you are fully in this
might not be the book for you. I’ve said it in
all of them but if you don’t like magical realism,
this might not be a book for you. I think less
so than some of their earlier works. I think
this has more of a beginning middle end kind of
plot, but if you like things being closed off,
if you like things being totally explained
might not always be what you want to read
some comparisons and other things you might want
to read the winternight trilogy weirdly sprang
to mind. I think that idea of a kind of fairy
tale in the woods really worked for me, and also
something about the emotions of the story. I think
winternight has a lot of that as well. And this
kind of I don’t want to say heartbreaking again,
but the heartbreaking elements, but there are some
of those there as well. I wouldn’t say if you
read the winternight trilogy, you’ll definitely
love this. But there are some some similarities
there. I’ve also pegged Naomi Novik. Again,
I think that might just be the woods as a concept.
But Naomi novick’s uprooted does have that kind of
semi sisterly bond. They aren’t actually sisters,
and in my opinion, it probably should have been
a sapphic relationship wasn’t, but in this
case, they are sisters. But if you want to
explore that kind of about to say Girl on Girl
dynamic, then that’s not what I wanted to say.
But do you want to do explore that dynamic and
another kind of foresty book, that’s one that I
would recommend and it’s one of my favorite books,
I think of all of the AM McLemore it’s probably
somewhere between closest to when the
moon was ours for the emotional element,
and dark and deepest red which we’ll talk about
next week for the kind of more plot plot driven
book I suppose. Where I think some of the earlier
books feel a lot more character driven or emotion
driven. So yes, somewhere in between the two if
you liked those two I think you will like this
final thoughts. I think this is a really wonderful
book I would definitely recommend it is one of my
favorite AM McLemore books that there are it has
a really great exploration of as I say sisterhood
of gender identity of identity full stop of your
place in your community and so much more. It’s a
really great story written really well and I can’t
ask for more than that. Have you read this? Do you
have plans to? Is this the kind of book that you
would like to pick up? Do let me know down in the
comments below. If you haven’t already please do
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watching, that’s all from me and I will see you
in the next one. It’s gonna be some bloopers now
my first love pro for this my first pro for this