Every so often, a friend and I wish for more books in a category I sometimes call “’90s coffeeshop fantasy.” There are too few books in this category. “Something like Charles de Lint, but not” my friend will say. “Like
Girl, but with magic,” I’ll suggest. “More books kind of like Pamela Dean’s
Tam Lin,” we agree. But it’s a space that’s hard to pin down and define—elusive, magical, but like real life, too.
And then I read Michelle Ruiz Keil’s
Summer in the City of Roses, which is all of this and so much more. Lush, empathetic, strident, puckish, infused with a street-level punk-rock magic, it’s the kind of fairy tale my teen self didn’t even know a person could dream of. Much of its magic hums along like a current beneath the book’s skin, bursting out in full bloom for a transformative finale. But it’s there all along, if you’re looking—and this is the kind of book you want to give your full attention to.