Isabel Ibañez was born and raised in Boca Raton to a pair of Bolivian immigrants, matured in Orlando, and is currently living her adult life in Maitland, Florida. She’s an avid movie goer, a giant word nerd, and talented in mispronouncing basic English words, which, she says, is just the beginning of her endearing quirks. Isabel loves to doodle, cook, and read. She freely admits to loving the heck out of Young Adult literature (Potter!) and is a raving romantic sentimentalist — she adores Austen, James, Hardy and Wharton. She’s big on imagination, traveling, trivia about world history, and getting to the heart of the things. She has a profound fondness for all things Anthropologie.
Woven in Moonlight by Isabel Ibañez
Woven in Moonlight (2020) is a lushly imagined YA fantasy based on Bolivian history and culture, and featuring a creative form of magic based on weaving. The plot is exciting, filled with twists and turns and betrayals. For me, though, I also found that it had some elements that distracted me from the story, and some others that made less sense when I thought about them later.
Ximena is a young girl who lost her family when the indigenous Llacsans rose up against the colonizing Illustrians. The only survivor of the Illustrian royal family was Condesa Catalina. Ximena, who resembles the Condesa, was picked up off the streets and raised as a decoy for Catalina. Now everyone thinks she’s the Condesa, and when the Llacsan ruler Atoc demands the Condesa’s hand in marriage, it’s Ximena who must travel to his palace for the wedding. She’s hoping that she can find At... Read More
