BLOOD ROSES

These partially interconnected short stories treat magic as metaphor rather than as reality, in a watered-down version of Block’s trademark magical realism. Rachel Sorrow, who believes she is less beautiful and more intense than her rich friends, grows into a giant after she is kissed by a boy. Berry falls for a gang member from the barrio whom she can't invite to her wealthy suburb—because he's not just poor, but a centaur. Elodie sprouts magical tattoos as she falls in love with an older man; they fade just as inexplicably when she falls out of love. A nameless boy who has experienced too much death gets seduced by a dangerous fairy who calls him “Panda Bear”and “Creamsicle.” With overwrought passages such as “smoke-scented flowers with sharp thorns that traced poetry onto your flesh” and “that moment when you cut yourself with a knife and squeeze the skin and no blood oozes out,” these brief tales of sexual and psychological abuse, adolescence and twisted first love have plenty of mood but little depth. (Fiction. 14-15)