If These Wings Could Fly by Kyrie McCauley
It’s so important not only that books like this exist, but that this author started it by telling her readers that she knows what it feels like to live in an abusive household because often times it's hard to recognize the way you are being raised is not right when you have never known anything else. Books like this show us that there is another way to live and more than that that there is hope and there is help.
This book is not only about Leighton and the abusive household in which she lives. That is a consequence. Of the place, they live in and certainly of the way in which children are raised. How boys and girls are treated differently and they grow up being harmed by it, but the girls are often the ones that feel it the most.
I also liked that the author made sure to point out that violence is not an isolated thing: oftentimes abusers were victims themselves and they count on the complicity of others, on people thinking that it's not their business or place to intervene to continue with their behavior. It’s up to everyone to speak up!
On the opposite side of that culture of violence and silence, we have an younger generation that is trying to be better: a sense of sisterhood among the girls that try to protect each other (while older women try to protect their families and their husbands place in society at their own cost) and boys that are more and more being raised to be good instead of pressurized into being “strong”.
Leighton and Liam’s relationship is in every way opposite of Leighton’s parent's relationship. They spend most of their time talking, both about their interests but also about what the other is comfortable with: both of them, not just the Leighton. Liam is treated as a human being, not the perfect boy that knows everything and has no flaws. He is not a protector, he is a friend and a partner, that understands that it’s not his place to tell her what to do, or fly over her head and do what he thinks is right.
This idea that tradition is used as an excuse to be hurtful is seen not only when protecting men but to excuse racism. Liam is one of the few POC students in his school and although he is popular and beloved that comes at a tremendous cost that he is fully aware of.
I really, really, loved the writing in this book and particularly how the author had teenagers talking and thinking like teenagers do. I also really enjoyed the magical realism part up until the ending. The crows who are amazing and really smart creatures also deserve some love and it was fun to have a book in which they were not an evil omen.
Thank you to Edelweiss+ and Katherine Tegen Books for this DRC.
