BOOK REVIEW: Above Us Only Sky

This is a book review for Above Us Only Sky by Michele Young-Stone. I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. The publication date is scheduled for March 3 of this year. I am using this book for my New to You Challenge (it was a new to me author) hosted by Herding Cats and Burning Soup, as well as Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge (book published this year).

On March 29, 1973, Prudence Eleanor Vilkas was born with a pair of wings molded to her back. Considered a birth defect, her wings were surgically removed, leaving only the ghost of them behind. At fifteen years old, confused and unmoored, Prudence meets her long-estranged Lithuanian grandfather and discovers a miraculous lineage beating and pulsing with past Lithuanian bird-women, storytellers with wings dragging the dirt, survivors perched on radio towers, lovers lit up like fireworks, and heroes disguised as everyday men and women. Prudence sets forth on a quest to discover her ancestors, to grapple with wings that only one other person can see, and ultimately, to find out where she belongs. Above Us Only Sky spans the 1863 January Uprising against Russian Tsarist rule in Eastern Europe to the fall of the Berlin Wall, and Lithuania gaining its independence in 1991. 

I had high hopes for this book. The premise was promising and the cover is beautiful. Unfortunately, the book did not live up to my expectations. The book starts with a brief tale about Prudence's birth and then jumps to her adult years, then teenage years, then her grandfather, then her grandfather's history as a child. Do you have whiplash yet? I did. The problem was that there were so many people I couldn't even keep them all straight. I had to reread some passages because I didn't know who anyone was talking about. And the book was just not that exciting. There was no real detail or plot to draw in the reader. Also, there was no real character introduction or detail; it jumped from character to character without developing any of them. I really struggled with the beginning of the book. I thought I was going to end up quitting the book. But I pushed through, mainly because I ate marking an ARC as a DNF. The middle of the book was the best part and that wasn't even about Prudence. It was about Prudence's great aunt's childhood and her life in Lithuania. Her great-aunt Daina was born with wings, but unlike Prudence, hers were not surgically removed. She had her wings and so her story was much more interesting. Then it got to the end and back to Prudence's life as an adult. The ending was drawn out and I was in a huge rush to finish the book so I could get back to one that was more interesting. 

Buy/Borrow/Skip: Skip!