Wild Beauty | A YA Book Review

Wild Beauty by Anna-Marie McLemore

I'm not sure what to say about this book. I loved the cover and enjoyed the story line between Fel and Estrella. The mystery of where he came from and why, Estrella grappling with her family's curse, Fel trying to grasp at bits of his past life. But that lovely story line got lost in copious amounts of floral and color descriptions (I'm talking paragraphs at a time and frequently) which sometimes left me distracted as opposed to enchanted. I also feel like this book is a bit guilty of diversity dumping. At times the writing style seemed like it was trying too hard to be like classic storytelling with the language choice (periods are mentioned at least four-five times and worded something like 'the time they bled between their legs' which personally made me cringe--I'm almost 36 years old. Let's call a spade a spade...and why was it mentioned so often and in passing?). I guess the story line I found most intriguing (the love, the curse, another family's role in said curse and how it tied everyone together) was second to everything else in the publisher's eye. For me this book was just okay and even though The Weight of Feathers came highly recommended to me, it makes me hesitant to pick up another book by this author since Wild Beauty was a bit of a tedious read for me.