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Book Summary and Reviews of Lakelore by Anna-Marie McLemore

Lakelore by Anna-Marie McLemore

Lakelore

by Anna-Marie McLemore

  • Critics' Consensus (2):
  • Published:
  • Mar 2022, 304 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

In this young adult novel by award-winning author Anna-Marie McLemore, two non-binary teens are pulled into a magical world under a lake - but can they keep their worlds above water intact?

Everyone who lives near the lake knows the stories about the world underneath it, an ethereal landscape rumored to be half-air, half-water. But Bastián Silvano and Lore Garcia are the only ones who've been there. Bastián grew up both above the lake and in the otherworldly space beneath it. Lore's only seen the world under the lake once, but that one encounter changed their life and their fate.

Then the lines between air and water begin to blur. The world under the lake drifts above the surface. If Bastián and Lore don't want it bringing their secrets to the surface with it, they have to stop it, and to do that, they have to work together. There's just one problem: Bastián and Lore haven't spoken in seven years, and working together means trusting each other with the very things they're trying to hide.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Bastián and Lore are deeply empathetic, loving characters embodying each facet of their intersecting identities with anxiety, hope, and pride that binds them to each other as much as to the loving community that surrounds them." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"In characteristically majestic prose, McLemore crafts vivid magic that balances scenes of overwhelming, unregulated emotions given life by the lake with soothing, sincere moments of love, self-affirmation, and gentle humor...A beauty both bright and deep." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"An astonishingly beautiful love letter to neurodivergent and nonbinary teens cast amid a magical lake setting that will pull you in right along with the characters." - Booklist (starred review)

"Lovely and deep, colourful and creeping, perfect magic." - E.K. Johnston, #1 New York Times-bestselling author

"An absolute knockout. McLemore has created a jar full of glitter that I wish I could read again for the first time...One of the most important pieces of queer fiction I've ever had the pleasure to read." - TJ Klune, New York Times-bestselling author of The House on the Cerulean Sea

This information about Lakelore was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Anna-Marie McLemore

Anna-Marie McLemore was born in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains and taught by their family to hear la llorona in the Santa Ana winds. They are the author of The Weight of Feathers, a 2016 William C. Morris YA Debut Award Finalist; 2017 Stonewall Honor Book When the Moon Was Ours, which was longlisted for the National Book Award in Young People's Literature; Wild Beauty, a Kirkus, School Library Journal, and Booklist best book of 2017; Blanca & Roja, a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice; Dark and Deepest Red, a Winter 2020 Indie Next List title; and The Mirror Season, which was longlisted for the National Book Award in Young People's Literature.

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