Review: Lobizona by Romina Garber
I am going to start out by saying that I listened to the audiobook and the narrator is literally unlistenable unless she is speed up legitimately to 2X. She speaks so incredibly slowly. I just feel obligated to warn folks who are considering listening, and this probably slightly contributed to my negative view of most of this book. Though I don't think it had too much of an impact because I sped her up the whole time.
Lobizona is an urban/portal YA fantasy about Manu, an undocumented girl living and hiding in Miami with her mother and her surrogate grandmother. She is hiding from ICE but also has to keep her eyes hidden due to their extremely obvious magical appearance. The combination of these two factors means her life is incredibly isolated, she lives almost completely in books and in research about outer space. One day her whole world comes crashing down and she is forced to seek out the magical world her mother has been hiding from her.
This book is clearly quite beloved. I, in no way, am trying to invalidate that, nor do I think I could if I wanted to. I found this to be an incredibly frustrating reading experience.
I will start with what I liked! I really liked getting to know Manu in the first thirty or so pages. I think she was such a well written full picture of the isolation of being othered while also being a really vibrant interesting character. More on this later. I also really enjoyed the last ~50 pages. I was interested in the magical world and wanted to see what was coming. But my overall frustration with the rest of the book will most likely prevent me from reading further in this series. And I liked Cata as a character.
Now onto the rest of my thoughts.
Manu almost completely abandons all of her previous characterization once she enters the magical world. She mentions space twice, the will occasionally mention a book she read in the past but does not even consider reading, and she almost completely does not think about anyone in her past life for most of the rest of the book. She was obsessed with this girl she called other Manu, she is never mentioned again, her grandmother is injured and HER MOTHER IS IN ICE CUSTODY and the reader is meant to be swept away in a world of witches and werewolves.
I literally could not be interested in any of these things until the point about 50 pages from the novels conclusion where Manu is forced to think about her mother again. She was swooning over a boy, more on why this relationship did not work for me later, and trying to figure out her own magic while I literally could not have cared less about the magical world. I was so attached to the very real consequences happening in the human world, I could not be swept away. It felt like so much was set up only to be abandoned by the narrative. There were so many real world stakes that were incredibly high that it felt like a struggle to then switch my attention to the fantasy world stakes.
I did not like the relationship that Manu had with Tiago. I knew the 'twist' relating to him about half way through the book, but I still couldn't help but be annoyed with Manu for thinking so much about a boy she though was in a relationship. And a boy she thinks treats multiple women poorly! She even confronts him about hurting a line of girls before Manu arrived and he brushes it off and the reader is meant to be swept away by the fact that he has never felt like this before. With characters who can fit into the 'rake' archetype the thing I want is acknowledgment that they have hurt people in the past and that they want to change that in the future, not that now that they have met the special main character it isn't a problem anymore. I do not understand why either of these characters like each other. I was just really frustrated with their whole relationship.
The world building and character development in general in this book didn't always work for me. We get a lot of info dumping. Characters go off on little monologues that make little sense for them to do in context. The way Manu receives help at the magic school is poorly done. The characters who provide this friendship and assistance lack motivation to do this aside from it is what the plot needs to happen.
The other 'twist' is who Manu's father is. It is not shocking when it turns out he is basically the only named adult male. I knew who he was the first time Manu meets him, though I didn't get annoyed by this until about half way through the book. I know that I am 28 and this is YA, so I try to not be bothered by heavy handed foreshadowing, but I would very much have appreciated some misdirection at the very least.
This book has a lot of influence from Harry Potter, the author mentions Harry Potter many time in the text and in her authors notes. You can really see a lot of influence in the way this story was structured. I did think this was interesting, to see the places where this story had moments of mirroring or reference. This having been said, I did find the 'school' aspect of this book frustrating. The only werewolf lesson we get is literally howling class. I just wanted so much more form the educational aspect of the story. I didn't fully get why it was set at a school aside from the authors love for Harry Potter. It felt under utilized and underdeveloped.
There were also lots of little details in this book that just drove me bananas. The first and most baffling was the fact that Manu takes three pills each meant to knock her out for one day. She takes the three pills all at once so it makes her sleep for three days. Which is baffling and not how time release medication works at all. The pills are basically magic, but this is never addressed in any way. There were other moments in similar veins where I did not understand the internal logic of the book. The pills are said to knock people out, but are also spoken of both as a sort of cure all and an opiate.
I did like that Garber confronted sexism in this story and the queer representation in the story. But I do think a lot of it was a bit clumsy. Having the magic be so gendered, then having Manu go across that gender barrier with the magic but not have a discussion about gender in the context of queerness was very strange to me. It felt like an oversight at the very least, but seems like a direct avoidance of trans people as a part of this world despite the author including a vague reference to trans folks in Argentina. The queer characters in the book are given speeches about their queer identities that feel stilted, and the character who does not want to come out publicly in an incredibly homophobic society is treated by the narrative as being selfish for this choice. I truly think this is a harmful way to treat closeted queer people and this messaging actively encourages people to come out in physically unsafe scenarios.
I am very glad that this book has clearly found its readers, and I am sad that I was not a huge fan. I was quite excited to read it! That is alright, we shall just part ways here.
I gave this book 2 stars.
