Lakelore
by Anna-Marie McLemore
High School    Feiwel    304 pp.    g
3/22    978-1-250-62414-7    $18.99
e-book ed.  978-1-250-62415-4    $10.99

Two teens—both brown, trans, and neurodivergent—reunite years after a chance meeting and find themselves bound together by their most personal experiences and by the magic of a local lake. Bastián copes with ADHD and the next step of their gender transition by creating alebrijes—brightly painted, fantastical, papier-mâché creatures—and sending them into the lake. Lore, who is dyslexic and was bullied at their old school, moved to town after a devastating fight. As the lake’s magic breaks its usual boundaries, seeping into Bastián’s and Lore’s lives on dry land, they realize that it is responding to the painful emotions they’ve released into the water (Bastián via alebrijes, Lore through cans of paint) and that they can’t reject their own pain or imperfections. The book is committed to its characters’ gender, racial, and neurodivergent identities; while this focus can feel overworked at points, the intimacy and seriousness with which it addresses neurodivergence in particular is welcome. McLemore (The Mirror Season, rev. 5/21) successfully binds the novel’s fantasy elements to the inner lives of their characters, strengthening the narrative effects of both the mundane and the magical. Readers with identities in common with the protagonists will find relief and recognition in this impassioned book, and teens in general should feel welcomed by its warmly open storytelling.

From the May/June 2022 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.