Jacque - The Mirror Season and How it Handles a Sensitive Topic

Warning: This book, along with this review, deals with an incredibly heavy topic which is sexual assault. Please don't read if this will harm you or your mental health in anyway, please take care of yourself.

The Mirror Season is about a high school girl named Graciela “Ciela” Cristales. Her family owns a bakery that’s known for using magical powers to know what pastry you need as soon as you walk in the door. She follows her family and works at the shop but she suddenly loses the ability to know what pastry customers want after she is sexually assaulted by some of her classmates. While she was being assaulted, another classmate of hers was being assaulted at the same time next to her. She has to live with the guilt of not being able to do anything to help the boy, and also the shame and trauma of being assaulted herself. It gets a lot worse when the boy, Lock, shows up at her high school as a new student. However, Lock doesn’t have any memory of that night besides knowing he was assaulted, and Ciela isn’t quite sure if she should tell him yet.

I liked a lot of things about this book. It emphasizes the importance of realizing how oppression affects sexual assault victims, and the relationship between Lock and Ciela— both platonic and romantic— is realistic yet compelling to read. Their relationship is built off supporting each other. They both know that similar things have happened to them even if they can’t say it out loud yet. It’s a relationship made of camaraderie and understanding against their tormentors who are still at large. It’s sweet, even though their relationship goes through troubles at times. They’re strong when they are attacked by rich, white, straight classmates. They’re strong when they know that they can’t report what happened to them because they were assaulted by those same classmates. They know that their case will never get heard because they’re marginalized themselves. Ciela is brown and queer, and Lock is poor. Their assaulters know that they can’t get justice so they continue to torment them even after the assault.

That leads into one of the two things I didn’t really like about this book. Throughout this book, there is a constant metaphor of broken glass. Ciela sees it everywhere after her assault, especially in moments of remembering her trauma or during moments of stress. I did not quite understand this metaphor. It’s unclear what the broken glass symbolizes in my opinion. It’s obvious that seeing this broken glass is connected to Ciela recovering from her assault but it’s unclear what that glass actually means. Is it about her piecing herself back together and recovering? Is it about connecting the memories of that night back together? The symbolism is muddy and vague and it’s hard for readers to connect the dots.

Another thing I didn’t really like about this series was how Lock and Ciela’s assault affected their relationship. A major guilt factor for Ciela was that Ciela was used to assault Lock while they were both unable to give consent. This fact is consistently one of the biggest hang-ups for Ciela throughout the story and it’s one of the main reasons she has lost her ability to use her family’s magic. However when Lock finds this out, he simply shuts himself off from Ciela for a few days. Ciela knocks on his door, and apologizes. That’s it. No permanent changes to their relationship, no understanding conversation, no working through it. Lock ignores Ciela for a few days and she apologizes. There’s no talking through the nuances of being in a romantic relationship after going through something so traumatic together. It’s poorly handled in my opinion and somewhat unrealistic.

I would rate this book a 4/5. It's a solid book and deals with important stories of survivors who need to be heard but the writing itself failed to interest me at times. Obviously, I place a higher importance on the story of the author, who themself is a sexual assault survivor, and less on the writing which is why I rate it at a 4/5 stars. It's a good read, but please only read it if you are sure you can handle it, as it goes in graphic detail at times.

Happy reading