The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton

From the Hardcover:
Love makes us such fools.
   Generations of the Roux family have learned this lesson the hard way. Foolish love appears to be the family birthright, in fact, which casts an ominous fate for its most recent progeny: twins Ava and Henry Lavender. Henry is mute for much of his young life, and Ava-in all other ways a normal girl-is born with the wings of a bird.
   In a quest to understand her peculiar disposition and a growing desire to fit in with her peers, sixteen-year-old Ava delves into her family's past and ventures into the wider world, ill prepared for what she might discover and naive to the twisted motives of others. Others like the pious Nathaniel Sorrows, who mistakes Ava for and angel and whose obsession with her grows until the night of the summer solstice celebration. That night, the skies open up, rain and feathers fill the air, and both Ava's quest and her family's saga build to a dark and heartbreaking crescendo.
   First-time author Leslye Walton has constructed a layered and haunting mythology of what it means to be born with a heart that is tragically, exquisitely human.

"To many, I was myth incarnate, the embodiment of a most superb legend, a fairy tale. Some considered me a monster, a mutation. To my great misfortune, I was once mistaken for an angel. To my mother, I was everything. To my father, nothing at all. To my grandmother, I was a daily reminder of loves long lost. But I knew the truth-deep down, I always did.

I was just a girl." 

 Sometimes when you read a book, you just know, from the first sentence, "this is going to be fantastic." That was how I felt about The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender. There was an element of the magical from the very beginning, not Harry Potter magic, but something much more subtle. I love stories with just a hint of the extraordinary.

   The first half of the book goes into the history of the Roux family (just two generations back,) so you get a good sense of their peculiar traits. A mother who actually fades away, a girl who turns herself into a bird, and the grandmother of Ava, who has a very strong intuition. Love has always plagued the Roux family, often ending in disaster. While there is a love story involved, I wouldn't consider this book as a whole a "love story." It's more about what it means to be human, to be a family, to be loved for who you are.
   I can't say enough about this lovely work.There are so many different layers in this book it's impossible to sum up the depth involved. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys YA. It was a quicker read, it took me a day, but I really didn't want to put it down, it captivated me from the start.