Young adult
All of Us with Wings
Debut
We love supporting debut authors. Congrats, Michelle Ruiz Keil, on your first book!
Quick take
The dark side of rock 'n' roll and what it can do to your family (or families) when they're supposed to have your back.
Good to know
LGBTQ+ themes
Sad
Graphic violence
Sexual Content
Synopsis
Seventeen-year-old Xochi is alone in San Francisco, running from her painful past: the mother who abandoned her, the man who betrayed her. Then one day, she meets Pallas, a precocious twelve-year-old who lives with her rockstar family in one of the city’s storybook Victorians. Xochi accepts a position as Pallas’s live-in governess and quickly finds her place in their household, which is relaxed and happy despite the band's larger-than-life fame.
But on the night of the Vernal Equinox, as a concert afterparty rages in the house below, Xochi and Pallas accidentally summon a pair of ancient creatures devoted to avenging the wrongs of Xochi’s adolescence. She would do anything to preserve her new life, but with the creatures determined to exact vengeance on those who’ve hurt her, no one is safe—not the family she’s chosen, nor the one she left behind.
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Check out a preview of All of Us with Wings.
All of Us with Wings
1
All Tomorrow's Parties
Pallas sat sidesaddle on the kitchen counter, velvet ankle boots resting daintily in the deep porcelain sink. Pressing her nose against the dark kitchen window, she glared at the hulking cyclops creeping steadily toward Eris Gardens, its single working headlight illuminating the carriage house and steep gravel drive.
"No one's supposed to park back there," she said. "Can't they read?"
Maybe they're too tired." Xochi yawned. "I mean, who starts a party at midnight?"
"It's an afterparty." Pallas swirled a perfect cursive P in the steam her breath had made on the window. "Midnight counts as after."
"Midnight counts as bedtime." Xochi downed the rest of her coffee.
"Maybe for you."
Pallas had never had a bedtime herself, not even as a baby. Certainly not now that she was nearly thirteen.
She giggled. "You claim you're not governess material, but listen to you—so prim and disapproving."
Xochi rolled her eyes and reached over Pallas to pull back the lace curtain. Exhaust poured like fog from the old car's tailpipe. "Who drives a hearse?"
Pallas sighed. She had a pretty good idea of who the boxy eyesore belonged to. "Some people get one song on the radio or open for Lady Frieda a few times and suddenly they're above parking on the street like everyone else."
She held her breath as the rusty behemoth lurched past the collection of vintage motorcycles parked behind the kitchen and shuddered to a stop. Four doors opened and five girls emerged. Like a line of paper dolls cut from the same pattern, they were thin and pale, with long white muslin dresses and waist-length blonde hair. They came in single file without knocking and passed through the kitchen without a word. The last one spared a head movement toward Pallas that might have been a nod and followed the others into the hall.
Why I love it
Lily Philpott
@lilyphilpott
Growing up, I was the only Latina in my overwhelmingly white school system in Connecticut. As a teenager, I fell deeply in love with pop-punk and "real" punk music, watching shows at community centers and supporting local ska bands. There's something about the way a strident guitar riff bites into your soul or a drum beat slams against your heart that moved me in a way I've never forgotten. Despite my love for the music and my desire to fit into the scene, I had a sense at the time that I didn't belong because my hair and clothes weren't right, and because I was brown. I hadn't yet learned about Latinx punk groups, or gone to shows in more welcoming spaces.
So it’s no surprise I was drawn to All of Us with Wings, a love letter to the healing power of music and found families. The book follows Xochi, who at just 17 is on her own in San Francisco, running from a dark past. When she befriends Pallas, the daughter of rock stars Leviticus and Io, she becomes her live-in babysitter, joining their eccentric, rock 'n’ roll family. But after a crazy concert, Pallas and Xochi accidentally summon two magical beings hell-bent on avenging the wrongdoers in Xochi's past—from her rapist to her absentee mother—forcing Xochi to confront the past she’d been hoping to escape.
This book is full of dark and whimsical moments (Peasblossom, a fortune-telling cat, is a highlight among them), and I loved that Xochi is a layered, well-rounded character, capable of self-love and self-loathing in equal measure. She's an assault survivor, a reader of Sylvia Plath, and a lover of punk music, and I love that she's so complicated and so confident in her own skin. I won’t lie, this book is intense—it is, after all, a story of sex, hard drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll more suitable for an older YA audience—but if you’re looking for a complex, vividly written story, then this is the book for you.