Miracles, Magic, and Owls

All the Crooked Saints 
By: Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: YA Magical Realism

"Any visitor to Bicho Raro, Colorado is likely to find a landscape of dark saints, forbidden love, scientific dreams, miracle-mad owls, estranged affections, one or two orphans, and a sky full of watchful desert stars.

At the heart of this place you will find the Soria family, who all have the ability to perform unusual miracles. And at the heart of this family are three cousins longing to change its future: Beatriz, the girl without feelings, who wants only to be free to examine her thoughts; Daniel, the Saint of Bicho Raro, who performs miracles for everyone but himself; and Joaquin, who spends his nights running a renegade radio station under the name Diablo Diablo.
They are all looking for a miracle. But the miracles of Bicho Raro are never quite what you expect."

I haven't read many books in the magical realism genre, and the ones I have were just pain weird. Thankfully, All the Crooked Saints wasn't like that. It was weird in ways that make sense, if that makes any sense ;). I loved the symbolism spread throughout the novel, and how she creates Bicho Raro as a character in itself. When authors do this, it just adds so much more reality and depth to their characters and, in turn, their novel, for no one is anyone without the location or several locations where they grew up.

I didn't fall in love with any one specific character; Maggie drops you into everyone's tale so that you root for every character. For this tale isn't about a specific character, it's the community coming together to fight their darkness. That's unusual in novels, but it's more like real life.

The only thing that irked me about this book was the facts she throws in. Most of them I found fascinating, but toward the end of the novel, I was questioning why she had placed some of the facts in the story, as they didn't seem to add much to the plot and seemed almost to the point of showing off.

But overall, it's a great, magical tale of miracles, darkness, and owls. I give it a 4 out of 5 and recommend it for youth ages 15 and up.

What I learned: Everyone has darkness in themselves. And sometimes just seeing and realizing that truth is when the miracle unfolds.

If this novel sounds interesting, or even if it doesn't, you might also like: The Scorpio Races by Stiefvater.