REAL TO ME

The imaginary-friend trope gets turned on its head.

Told mostly in first person, this story follows a large furry green creature and a small Black girl who are engaged in a series of adventures. “When you have a great friend, the rest of the world can seem to disappear.” Together the two laugh and play, are brave together, and get in trouble. Others say that the friend is imaginary, but our narrator isn’t so sure. And then, one day, the friend is unexpectedly gone. Now it becomes clear that the narrator wasn’t the girl but the newly morose and lonely monster. “She was real to me.” In time our narrator makes friends with other creatures and once more has adventures and misadventures. Even so, the protagonist never forgets their first friend. It is a testament to Figueroa’s talents that while the main character may be furry, the heartbreak and longing they exude feel achingly real, as does the friendship at the center of the story. In the latter half of the book, Lê elegantly repeats phrases and cadences that appeared in the first half (thereby linking the new friends to the old), but it’s Figueroa’s lush, electric, pulsating hues and colors that bring the worldbuilding to life, with jewel tones depicting bright sunny days and illuminated nights. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A friend is a friend, and while the twist is clever, the robust storytelling throughout will prove the book’s greatest lure.