Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for an eARC of The Boy With A Bird in His Chest in exchange for an honest review.

This book follows Owen, a teenager who is trying to navigate his daily life while also trying to keep an important secret: he has a bird that lives in his chest. Follow Owen as he goes to highschool and has to figure out how to make his own way.

I love coming of age novels, so I thought this would be another one to add to the stacks. Sadly, I was let down. Some of the story lines were underdeveloped and dropped in the middle of the story, while others were introduced later into the book and then never went anywhere.

I didn’t particuarly find any of the characters to be loveable, and didn’t feel for them in any way when something good or bad happened to them.

Overall, I’m giving this book a 2/5 because although it wasn’t a great story, a story was there and I was able to finish the book without dreading every moment I had to pick it back up. There were also some great moments of vivid imagery that really fit within the story.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is into magical realism and wants to escape into a world where some people have animals that live inside of them.

This is a creative and engaging story. Owen Tanner is born with a hole in his chest where a bird lives. Owen's mother is convincing that if anyone learns about Owen's condition, they will take him away from his home. So she keeps Owen at home, isolating him from other people and convincing him of the danger that will befall him if he leaves their home. When Owen, eager to learn more about the outside world, begins to venture out for walks and nothing bad happens, he becomes increasingly bold in his adventures -- until one day he is injured and his mother must seek the care of the doctor. When the doctor uncovers Owen's underlying condition, he and mother flee and she places Owen in the care of his uncle, several states away. Living with his uncle and cousin, and able to attend school, Owen gradually is able to build a more typical life, complete with the joys and complications of family, friends, and a first love. But Owen cannot shake the isolation that he feels or the sense that he is constant danger -- leading him to question whether he will ever have a life that is secure and joyful.

This was a well-written, emotional, and unique coming of age story. I really enjoyed this book, and I'm excited to see what comes next from this author.

Highly recommended!

Have you ever felt like you had to hide a part of yourself? In “The Boy With A Bird in His Chest” Emme Lund introduces us to Owen and to Gail, the hidden bird. This strange tale addresses the challenges of growing up queer and the anxieties of revealing your true self. Thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for the ARC.

Owen, a teenage boy, and Gail, the java sparrow who lives between his open ribs, have always been together and always will be. How they navigate the world as they grow and struggle between the pulls of safety, freedom, and connection is shifting though. A finding your place in the world story that is real, special, and very queer.

Thank you for the advanced copy of this book! I will be posting my review on social media, to include Instagram, Amazon, Goodreads, and Instagram!

Exceptional coming of age story! Owen is born with a bird in his chest. What follows is his journey through growing up being “different “. Such a creative book.

"I have a bird who lives in my chest," he said. "Her name is Gail. She's always been there."

"The Boy with a Bird in His Chest" is a beautifully written coming-of-age story about a boy with a secret. Owen is what the medical community calls a "Terror," because in the fictional world that Emme Lund creates, as in the real world, anything or anyone who is different is to be feared. Anyone who has ever known how difficult life can be for those who are different will identify with Owen.

Owen spends most of his young life hiding his secret but when is secret is discovered and he must go into hiding with his uncle and cousin, Owen discovers that there is more to life than hiding who he is, and that one doesn't truly begin to live until you embrace your differences. Often times if you embrace your differences, others around you will too.

This is a beautiful book about love and acceptance. It's about having the courage to let your real self shine through. I love the real-world issues the characters face in their fictional world; issues such as race, sexuality, bullying, and gender. This lovely novel is one of the most intimate and honest books I have read in quite some time. Its raw emotion will have the reader laughing and crying right along with the characters. "The Boy with a Bird in His Chest" is truly a book not to be missed, and it will stay with the reader long after the last page is read and the cover closed.

Many thanks to NetGalley,. the publisher, and the author for the amazing privilege of reading an advanced digital copy of this gorgeous book, in exchange for my honest review.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Genre: Contemporary + Magical Realism + LGBTQ

Owen Tanner is a seventeen-year-old boy living with his mother. She isolates him from the outer world due to an extraordinary condition he suffers from. He has a hole in his chest and in that hole resides a bird called Gail! But one day Owen decides to get out of his cage and has to suffer some consequences which leads him to hide with his cousin Tennessee. This escape will open up many doors and opportunities for Owen. It also makes him understand himself and his feelings.

This is a coming-of-age story with magical realism and lots of metaphors. I liked the relationship between Owen and his bird Gail. I feel every reader will interpret that bird into a particular thing. In the story, it is there but its presence is more of a metaphoric value. I feel most readers will be able to like the main character easily. The story focuses on the changes in Owen’s life and how he moved away from isolation to the open world. It is more about facing the world and facing your fears instead of living in their shadows.

I feel the author brilliantly represented the character who is different than others and how people around him reacted to him, how much they liked him or tolerated him. That bird inside his chest represents his sexuality. It makes a lot of sense if you look at it that way. Although the author does not explicitly mention that it represents that but I strongly felt it from all the different factors in the story. For a debut novel, this was a truly nice tale that is well written and with loveable characters. Somehow I can say that its concept is similar to Nicola Yoon’s Everything Everything but with magical realism and LGBTQ elements. I feel many readers will be able to relate to Owen and his story.

Many thanks to the publisher Atria Books and NetGalley for providing me with an advance reader copy of this book.

I loved this! Owen, Tennessee, and co turned out to be a lot more relatable than I thought, especially as a queer person. The writing was beautiful and funny at times, and Owen's relationships felt so powerful. My main critique was that I think that the allegory of the bird was a bit unclear. I loved Gail and the sprinkle of magical realism, and I read it as a symbol of queerness and otherness, but that could have been made a bit more clear.

The Boy With A Bird In His Chest is a coming of age story about Owen Tanner. Going through puberty and adolescence, he’s learning to cope with himself and the world around him.

Oh, and he’s got a bird living in his chest.

The bird makes Owen special - and different from others. He wants to hide it so he doesn’t get outed. I’m guessing you can see the symbolism on it.

It’s a lonely life when you are hiding a huge secret and all you want is to be loved and understood. But you can’t have that life and still have your secret.

So Owen struggles, like many teens, to figure out who he is and try to find a way to be comfortable with it.

This is definitely a memorable book. I mean, for goodness sakes, he’s got a bird living in his chest. Aside from the bird chest thing, I’m not sure there’s much else here that is entirely unique.

The good news is that the bird in his chest is f-ing hilarious.

#netgalley #theboywithabirdinhischest

The Boy with a Bird in his Chest is a beautiful coming of age story about the magical journey of Owen, a boy born with a boy in his chest, struggling to come to terms with himself and the complexities of the world around him. I am not typically a reader who enjoys fantasy and, frankly, started reading this book not knowing what to expect. I was so pleasantly surprised to be pushed outside of my comfort zone to encounter a wonderfully well-written story full of deep thematic underpinnings that will keep me thinking in the days and weeks to come.

This book didn’t work for me. Love the concept but the writing wasn’t for me and I wished there was more magical elements.

this is a quick, fabulist read about a contemporary queer coming-of-age that does not diverge greatly in tone or content from other contemporary queer coming-of-ages, despite its genre elements. the prose style involves a certain sing-songy fairytale quality and repeated imagery/phrases; this is most successful when the imagery or phrase feels original and unforced, which is not always. the prose is often simple, which conveys an earnestness that works with the material and the protagonist's age.

at times moving, this novel faltered for me because its characters rarely felt meaningfully defined or differentiated—i could perhaps tell you one or two things about a cousin or a friend or a love interest that set them apart from the others, but tonally and in voice there was a homogeneity that i could not get past. the one character who felt fully dimensional is the protagonist's mother; that character/relationship was well-rendered and complex, the heart of the whole thing, and i would have loved to have seen more of it. but when in the final act we change narrative perspective to another character and they sound identical to the protagonist who has been our narrative perspective for the first however many hundreds of pages, that is a problem!

all in all: a sweet-sad queer story that will vibe with fans of sweet-sad queer stories. i would have liked some more oomph from the sentences or the characters, but there are stand-out moments that i'll be thinking about for a while now that it's done.

thanks to the publisher and netgalley for the arc. goodreads review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4502583987

Thank you so much, NetGalley and Atria books, for the chance to read and review this book in exchange of an honest review.

Owen Tanner is a peculiar boy, because he has a chatty bird in his chest. As soon as Gail emerged from his ribs, Owen's mother decided to hide him away from the world, in order to protect him, but when a trip outdoors changes everything, Owen's life is turned upside down and he's forced to flee his confining home and to finally live in plain sight with his uncle and cousin in Washington. Here Owen will finally be able to embrace himself, finding a family and joy, sharing his bird and experiencing different things, life falling in love, rejections, friendships, family and so much more. Owen will learn to live his life and truth, even though the threat of the Army of Acronyms is a looming presence, making him fear.

The boy with a bird in his chest is absolutely a very original and compelling read, a coming-of-age story filled with love, queerness, family and magic, but also dealing, in a very sensitive way, with fear, depression and doubts. I loved this story and Owen's journey in accepting, loving and embracing himself and his being unique.
This book is sweet and intense and I felt Owen's fear, his isolation, depression and how he feared he would never be accepted, loved and embraced as he is and his journey into accepting that he will. I was moved and intrigued by this story, it was impossible not to and I loved both the plot and the characterization, but mostly Owen's character and journey. These characters, Owen most of all, are deeply realistic, messy, original and relatable at the same time. In a brilliant and curious allegory, The boy with a bird in his chest is absolutely a sweet and amazing story, told by a unique voice and a magnificent writing style.

Thank you so much to Atria books for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
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This book is a beautiful coming of age story. The Bird is really a metaphor for being different, and learning how to navigate life while wanting to fit in but also protect your secret. Owens mother is fiercely protective of her son, and guards him from the world for years, yet she isn’t present.
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The beginning started out pretty slow for me, and then when it started to pick there parts that were bizarre and hard for me to grasp. This story has a lot of potential and I would read more from this author. I just wanted more from the characters.

4.5 Stars

A beautifully shared coming-of-age story of the anguish of young love shared through a mystical, magical journey of a young boy named Owen who lives with a bird inside his chest. A bird who chatters away when she has an opinion she finds it necessary to share. After all, he is her home.

There’s an old saying that home is where the heart is, and for this java sparrow named Gail, his body is her home. Gail wants to sing her story to the world, which, of course, isn’t safe for Owen. Ever since his mother knew about the bird she understood that it was something she had to help Owen appreciate that he must keep it a secret - just between the two of them. It doesn’t help their situation that there’s a doctor looking for them that knows about the bird in his chest. It is a rare condition, but a person with this condition is referred to as a Terror. The doctor searches all the online forums for help locating Owen, which places Owen in even more danger, so his mother sends him to live with his uncle and cousin in Montana.

There, he lives a life he never had before. He attends school, and endeavors to navigate this new life, after spending most of his life hidden away inside the home where he’d lived with his mother. His life has changed, and slowly he begins to find himself opening up to others. First his cousin Tennessee, and as time passes he lets others in, and while he isn’t always accepted by those who can’t tolerate those who are ‘different,’ he realizes that he isn’t alone in how he wants to be seen. But, in finally being seen, he opens himself to be rejected by those who are intolerant of his differences, and who let it be known, as well.

At times this is heartbreaking, the cruelty he endures by those who fear what makes him ‘different’- as though it were contagious. But the heartbreaking moments are balanced by love, and his realization that there are enough people that do love him, without conditions. It is then that he fully allows himself to believe in following his dreams, and living this life - the one he chose.

Shared through a sprinkling of magical realism, this debut shares a tale of love, as well as a love story, a story of living a life fully by embracing your truths, and finding those who truly love you for who you are.


Pub Date: 15 Feb 2022

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Atria Books
#Boywithabird #NetGalley

It is important to note that the majority of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the subject matters of the book as well as those detailed in my review overwhelming. I would suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters which contain reflections on child endangerment, sexual acts (performed by minors), parental neglect, crimes motivated by bigotry, & others.

Owen has spent the entirety of his conscious life hidden; burrowed away from the world because his mother is convinced that it has nothing but terror to offer Owen, the boy known as a Terror due to the very real bird that has grown within the layers of his ribcage. Owen is sensitive to those around him as much as he is to his own emotional turmoil, due to sharing a physical body with an entity all their own; he has manoeuvred his way through life in which people can be two-in-one while being wholly singular. How swiftly the weighted word anchors itself to our heart. How delirious the memory of a decadent story can render us to become. How bewilderingly breathtaking it is to read a story about a boy with a bird in his chest who reminds us that the the heart can be as full of good memories as the mind.

Lund has exquisitely crafted a story so sickly sweet that I truly & very overwhelmingly adored this story. I must first begin this review with praise for the author as the prose which was employed throughout this book was wonderful. Reading this book was like walking through life with blue-coloured glasses; everything carried a weight of morose sorrow with the hint of hope that wafted through the vast shaded of blue. I was instantly hooked on Lund’s writing style as I very much enjoy writing which seeks to craft a scene; showing, leading a reader down a murky lake only to allow them to place themselves in the scene before beginning to exude the series of events which transpire in such a place. I acknowledge that this style will not be everyone’s cup of tea so, if you prefer writing that is more-so to the point, which does not seek to include repetitive phrasing with the purpose of adding minute details to an otherwise clearly painted picture, you might not enjoy this book. Therefore, please keep in mind that the writing style follows the mental dialogue of a person who has been nully exposed to the ‘real world’, their thoughts are often stunted by simple scenarios which the author takes pains to express.

I found that the writing style employed throughout the book ensured that character voices & points of view were excruciatingly clear. There was no fear of mistaking Gail (the bird) with Owen (the boy); each character was their own person as much as you or I. This is something that is important to remark upon as both the bird & the boy inhabit the same body; they share feelings so closely as to make it practically impossible to hide something from the other. We read many scenes in which Gail knows what Owen is feeling, sentimentally, without ever having to hear him say it. Therefore, the ability to render two such characters into lively, fully individual beings was wonderful & I fully applaud Lund for that.

As someone who has a difficult time suspending my disbelief I will not lie to you & say that this story flowed without my needed to do so. There are parts in the story where one might question how or why something would have been done this way; it might be so frustrating as to want to make you abandon the story. However, should you be able to regard the book for what it is, a story about more than a bird in a ribcage, you might forgive the scenes which do not accomplish what you wish for them to.

The reason I highlight this in particular is because this is the type of book we might see lining the curriculums of schools in the years to come. Some day we might hear a teacher ask of someone the importance of white cloaks & large stethoscopes rather than require us to focus on identification cards. This story poses us all the same question; what does the bird represent? It’s lovely to read a story about a boy who hosts a bird & they live through social qualms until they are loved & they love in return. However, there are too many scenes in this story for anyone of critical thinking to overlook. One must acknowledge the elephant in the room; this book allows every reader to pose themselves many vast & profound questions about what it is they carry inside themselves. This is one of the many reasons why I adored Owen as a character.

When we are first introduced to Owen it is through the setting of the scene; the boy born during the flood. We read about his mother’s decision to run away from the hospital workers after having told her that her son had a heart condition & he needed to be closely monitored. We are there when Gail appears in his chest & we are there when he roams free for one final day before his mother keeps him cooped-up forever. It’s incredibly sad to read about a character like Owen. I could not help but feel incredibly morose while reading about his life because he was truly held back due to the inability of his parents to understand the complexities of the person they brought into this world. Yes, I am lumping his father into this statement even though the man didn’t even know he had a child but, absence was a contributing factor to the life we read about. I felt so much empathy towards Owen that I began to feel hate towards his mother. Here walks a person who brought a child into the world only to subjugate them to their own adult delusions. Should we regard the story for what it is at face value, we have a person who locked their child in the house because they didn’t want them to be harmed by a group of people that we didn’t even know for certain were roaming the earth in search of someone like Owen. On the other hand, if we take a step back & regard the situation for what it might represent, it is absolutely horrendous. Owen was neglected on such a level as to alter him almost irrevocably. We watch him long for comfort & joy while knowing that at any moment’s notice, his mother might call him to tell him that is not what he deserves to feel in this life.

I understand that Owen’s mother wanted to keep her child safe, I understand that she was afraid of loosing the person that she loved. However, I find it very difficult to forgive parents who impose adult problems / issues on to their children. If you have an issue with how the world functions, that’s on you. Your child should not grow-up riddled with anxiety about the thought of the boogeyman looming around every corner. There is the possibility to be cautious without being paranoid.

As we see Owen grow we read about him discovering his body, his pleasures, his desires & all this encompasses sexual desires too. I personally found the way in which his sexual discovery was written to be as tasteful as it can be; we are, after all, reading about a person discovering what physical pleasures might arise from masturbation & most people who have gone through puberty might attest that learning to understand your body is not a smooth nor artsy process. Lund was able to write about something that is possibly taboo for many people & not so much for others, in a way as to remove us from the act itself & encourage us rather to focus on the mental hoops Owen has had to jump-through to arrive at accepting pleasure for himself. Having lived every waking moment up until that point in constant fear & anxiety about bad things that would befall him, it was good to read about him learning to believe that he could feel good within himself.

I think that as the story unfolds every person might find an aspect of the plot to appreciate. The characters are so incredibly well thought-out & they wander through prose which is delicious in its descriptors. I am already looking forward to the time wherein I am able to read this story again. Though it is nearly impossible to capture the sentiment of the first time reading a book that one loves, Owen felt overwhelmingly familiar to me, parts of myself in an otherwise total stranger. Therefore, I will anticipate the moment when we can meet in these pages again.

Thank you to NetGalley, Atria Books, & Emme Lund for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

#TheBoyWithABirdInHisChest #NetGalley

What a beautiful coming of age story. Owen struggles with a lot of the same feelings as many of us do as we grow up and come to terms with the idea that our parents and peers are only human, and may not actually always know what’s best or the “truth” about life.

Through experimenting with drugs and alcohol, various friendships, and exploring his own sexuality, Owen grows tremendously as a character throughout the book’s progression, in ways practically everyone can relate to. I loved seeing him develop relationships, and absolutely adored his very personal relationship with Gail, his chest bird. 🐦

This book would be great for anyone who enjoys heavily character driven plot lines, LGBTQ+ lit, and YA fiction.

Thank you so much to the author and Netgalley for providing me with an e-copy and allowing me to give my honest review!

The Boy With a Bird In His Chest is an achingly beautiful modern fantasy tale full of creative allegory, vibrant imagery, and young love.

I wasn't ready for this book. I'd read the reviews, most of which gushed over how emotionally impactful the story was for them. But I'm a jaded adult who couldn't possibly be swayed by a young adult tale, right? Yet Lund's character-driven tale got me in the feels right from the start. And it still haunts me now, hours after I finished it. I say character-driven because this is a character study shared in brief vignettes, some subtle as a whisper, inspiring as the green flash at sunset, or mysterious as the whisper of wind through a copse of trees. Readers looking for long chapters and clear plot threads should adjust their expectations accordingly.

Lund captured the environments of her vignettes with tantalizing minimalism, evoking breathtaking scenery using careful phrasing and watercolor imagery. Lund similarly captured the kaleidoscopic inner thoughts of Owen, the teenage main character, as he navigates the already tumultuous waters of being a queer teenager from a broken home who also happens to have a small bird named Gail living in a hole in his chest. Gail is at once allegory, turning Owen into the Terror he feels growing up gay in small-town America, and chorus, echoing Owen's thoughts and giving voice to his budding intuition and sense that the world is somehow wrong.

Despite knowing most of this already going in, I didn't expect the quiet masterpiece that I found on these pages.

The story contains mild descriptions of violence, teenage drug use, masturbation, and teenage sex.

The premise of this book (that it follows a boy with a bird living in a hole in his chest as a sort of metaphor for LGBTQ+ coming of age) is certainly intriguing, and unfortunately, in practice The Boy with a Bird in His Chest mostly falls flat. Instead of feeling like magical realism that will reveal truths about the world, the story feels like the setup for a dimestore fantasy novel in which a boy with a special power has to evade the dark forces who would like to do him harm. Except that the world Emme Lund creates around this boy, Owen, is absolutely not a fantasy world at all. So what we're left with is a standard coming-of-age novel about a boy struggling with acceptance (both external and internal) as he comes to terms with who he is. Even the quasi-metaphor that was supposed to make this book stand out becomes just another cliche in the end because Lund doesn't use it to say anything new or even interesting. The plotting also leaves something to be desired. All in all, it's a great idea squandered.