All Rachel Ramirez ever wanted was a baby. When several attempts end in miscarriage, Rachel transfers her grief to canvas, painting a series of pieces of how she sees her daughter in various stages of life, naming each piece ‘Nina’.

One of those pieces comes to life. This Nina has a limited world inside her painting, although she can see and hear the world directly outside her canvas. Nina’s world is thrown into chaos when Rachel commits suicide, and the painting is passed from Rachel’s mother to a good friend, Anna.

Soon, through a series of events, Nina is able to step out of her canvas in to Anna’s living room, where she learns many things of the world around her. Although inherently intelligent, Nina is naïve to societal and temporal nuances. But with the friendship and assistance of her new “owner”, Anna, and the blossoming, mainly platonic love of the wealthy and attractive, but mysterious, Andrea, Nina is able to more fully come to terms with her new world.

However, as all freedom comes with a price, Nina meets Elijah, the guardian in her dreams and canvas world. He tells her that in one year’s time, she’ll have to make a choice. She can return to her mystical canvas world and keep the memories she’s made, or she can leave her current life behind and be born with a new body and a new life. Either way, she won’t be able to bounce between worlds again.

How will she be able to decide, especially when she’s discovered a lasting friendship and the intimate bonds of pure love?

Words cannot begin to adequately describe how I feel about this book. Liz DeJesus has created a truly phenomenal story with Nina. I laughed. I cried. My heart swelled with joy and I experienced the awe of looking at a world afresh through the eyes of this extraordinary woman.

To tell the truth, I wasn’t sure what to expect when I first picked up this book. I don’t usually prefer first person stories. Sometimes they can be quite painful to read. At best, the story is well told, but the reader never loses sight of the fact that it’s a narrative. With Nina, I lost all awareness of voice and found myself simply crawling into her perspective and her world.

Nina, never having bludgeoned her vocabulary with slang, has a very poetic voice, fluid, descriptive and emotive, without being melodramatic. This is what I enjoyed best about Nina. As she describes seemingly simply things, like the ocean, tears, the sky, eyes, and love, it made me see these things in a completely new light.

No matter your genre reading preference, I wholeheartedly recommend you pick up a copy of Nina. You’ll be happy you did, and your world will become that much larger because of it.

Reviewed by: Bella