Bizarre pop culture fairytale. I devoured it. ( )

I received a free copy of Dreaming of You from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

A story told in verse, Melissa is able to bring back a dead celebrity and she chooses Selena and it's a wild ride. Anyone who is somewhat familiar with the impact Selena has had will enjoy this book and be able to reflect on what it would mean if Selena came back from death. ( )

(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through Edelweiss. Content warning for violence against women.)

We all know the story of Selena Quintanilla. The Tejana pop star who was murdered by her best friend and the manager
of her fan club, Yolanda Saldivar.
There are heroes.
There are villains.
There are fans.
There are girls trying to find
their reflection in a rippling
pond, and then feeling startled when a piece of gum falls out of their mouth.
There is a frog that thinks
the gum is a fly and chokes to death. Where were we?
This is a story of mirrors,
or what happens
when you bring the mirror
back from the dead and when you look in it you see yourself
eating yourself.
This is about You,
except when it’s not about you.
This is a love story.

***

the female killed her best friend, because only one woman can exist at a time, whoops!
honestly so sad that she’s dead but like, what if she lived long enough to like a tweet from a pro-life organization idk?

***

Another one died today and the world felt darker because we were left with ourselves.

***

I loved peluda, Melissa Lozada-Oliva's 2017 book of poetry, so I pounced on Dreaming of You: A Novel in Verse the second it popped up on Edelweiss. Even though I don't know much about Selena (I was in high school when she was murdered), the idea of exploring celebrity worship by resurrecting an iconic pop star proved an irresistible hook. That, and Lozada-Oliva's poetry is enchanting: fierce, with dark sense of humor and cutting cultural insight.

In this fantastical collection, complete with a cast of characters a la Shakespeare, Melissa holds a seance to bring Selena back from the dead. The details are sketchy, but the ritual involves a flash drive, some period blood, lipstick, and a bottle of Fabuloso.

Rounding out the cast are Yolanda Saldivar, who murdered Selena once and is apt to do it again; Papi/Abraham Quintanilla, both desperately happy to have his daughter back - and outraged at Melissa's transgression; She, "the shadow side" (a stand-in for all women, or so I assume?); Las Chismosas, "the eyes and the ears" who fill in the story's gaps and are reminiscent of Shakepseare's Weird Sisters; and You, meaning you and I, the readers, "the consumer and the consumed."

At first, Selena is a nebulous being, like a "fuzzy version of a girl." But as she continues to crystallize, her creator begins to disappear. Meanwhile, both Melissa and Selena are being stalked by Yolanda. And as news spreads of Selena's miraculous rebirth, more dead celebrities begin to appear (picture it: A Celebrity Prom!).

Most of the time, I felt like Dreaming of You worked better individually than as a whole; each poem is its own beautiful creature, but together they only kinda-sorta functioned as a cohesive interrogation of popular culture and celebrity worship vis-à-vis Selena. To be fair, I'm kind of a dunce when it comes to poetry, so maybe I just didn't get everything that Lozada-Oliva was putting down. Entirely possible! But Selena takes a loooong time to appear - the seance scene is nearly one-third of the way in - so I'm not entirely sure that's it. And on more than one occasion, I lost track of who was narrating.

Even so, Dreaming of You is an intriguing and thoughtful collection, chock full of memorable one-liners like these:

"She wears a Freudian slip and loves the way her nipples feel underneath it."

"Why are people in relationships always taking naps?"

"I can see myself crying over a body but also being the body."

"It will always be now and we can’t do anything about it."

"What is the word for getting someone to fall in love with us during karaoke?"

Bonus points: Lozada-Oliva manages to reference Annie Wilkes and Sharp Objects (the audiobook of which I'm listening to RIGHT NOW, after having just/finally seen the minseries!) in one poem. *chef's kiss* [insert "I understood that reference" gif here] ( )