Review copy provided by the publisher. Also the author is a good friend and I read an early draft of this book.
Cristina Ramos is not making the art she meant to make–it didn’t sell. Her paintings now are safe, predictable–things she can sell to tourists. Things that keep her buying more art supplies, things that keep her helping her large and beloved family in the way she wants to, not in her mother’s restaurant the way she feels everyone expects from the oldest daughter. Her nephews need her, her mother needs her, everyone needs her. But she still has visions of another way–sometimes literally. And when her mother is gunned down as an afterthought to a political murder, she can’t hold those visions back any more.
That’s when she meets Felipe K’icab. He’s a jaguar shapeshifter who’s been driving an unlicensed cab, trying to use his collection of masks to get by in a world that’s tumultuous enough for plain humans. Felipe’s roommates have been trying to draw him into their activism, but he gets pulled into the wrong end of dealing with his country’s corruption when he picks up a fare who’s a corrupt cop who recognizes him for what he is. Coopted into an investigation that gets in the way of his own loyalties, he has to scramble to keep his own secrets–and save his closest friends.
Lushly written and beautifully imagined, The Jaguar Mask reaches for the truth of artist’s visions and the needs of family and friends. Their road to unmasked truth is fraught and so, so very human–even when it comes on velvet paws. One of my favorite books of the year, full of tension and hope.