IF THESE WINGS COULD FLY by Kyrie McCauley

McCauley, K. If These Wings Could Fly, (2020), Katherine Tegen Books, HarperCollins Publishers.

13-17 years according to Amazon

I wanted to like this book. But I did not. If you are looking for extraordinarily books about teens surviving parental abuse, try N. Griffin’s Trigger, Nancy Werlin’s Rules of Survival or Rainbow Rowell’s damn near perfect Eleanor and Park. None of these books have the magical realism element of If These Wings Could Fly and I would argue they are the better for it. 

Neal Schusterman pushed child abuse into the speculative fiction realm with Unwind and Paolo Bachigalupi references it in Shipbreaker, but that is not the whole story in either of those novels. 

First, I should say that there were aspects of the book that I did like. The writing itself is strong and the middle sister in particular was an interesting and nuanced character. The romance wasn’t heavy handed and didn’t stand in the way of the story. And the crows were actually awesome. They are the only reason I kept reading. I was perusing Goodreads to see why people gave this book such a high score and many mentioned the crows, and damned if they didn’t add a nice aspect to the very rushed ending. 

I also liked the way that Leighton found an escape in her journalism. It was barely sketched out in the beginning of the book but the impact of her essay on people looking the other way at her family’s abuse was well done. 

Maybe I just didn’t like Leighton. She seemed bland and her snobbishness about state school rubbed me the wrong way. I am sure it was her father’s insistence she go that she was rebelling against, but it still seemed like a YA trope - going to NYU to get out of this oppressive town. If every fictional kid in a YA book that got out of their town by attending NYU actually went to NYU there wouldn’t be room for the actual human high school graduates. 

This was not a book that spoke to me. I know that not every book is for every person, and I believe that there are teens who would respond to this, but compared to the rest of the books I have been introduced to in this class, this one falls short. 

[Starry.ai didn't seem to like the book any better than I did if it's response to this possibly flawed prompt is any indication - "“A 17 year old girl, a 14 year old girl and an 8 year old girl are jumping off the roof of a house out in the country that is on fire and are caught by crows who help them get to the ground.”]