Review of Holy Parrot by Angel A

When was the last time you let a question remain unanswered—on purpose? In Holy Parrot, you’ll discover why uncertainty can sometimes be the most generous truth.

Content Warning:
Some thematic elements include emotional trauma, teen pregnancy, and spiritual visions. These are portrayed with care and subtlety. The review is appropriate for a wide audience.

A Lyrical Reflection on Mystery, Memory, and the Maps We Carry Inside

I. The Village with No Street Names

In the northern sweep of Colombia, where rivers remember mountains and parrots say more than just “hello,” lies a fictional truth wrapped in a very real village—Buritaca. You won’t find it in most guidebooks. But in Holy Parrot, the village is more than setting. It’s a pulse. A heartbeat. A spirit hovering above a coast too wild for postcards.

Here, a girl named Maria says she’s been chosen. By what? A parrot, apparently. Gabriel, his name is. He speaks—really speaks. “Today will be a good day,” he tells her, and maybe that’s all any of us ever need to hear.

But what is a “good day,” anyway?

This novel doesn’t answer that.

It dares not to.

II. You Can’t Carbon-Date Wonder

Leonard, a young scientist, arrives with petri dishes and plans. His suitcase is packed with logic. What he finds is a myth breathing beside a dusty road. Maria, sixteen, is pregnant. She says she hasn’t… you know. The father, she claims, is not a person. Not really. Not in the biological sense.

How do you even test that?

This isn’t science fiction. It’s science friction. A tale that lets empirical certainty rub up against everything it can’t grasp: language barriers, ancestral dreams, parables disguised as gossip. Leonard is caught between test results and testimonies, data points and dolphins dancing in a river like prophets in disguise.

And then there’s the parrot. Always the parrot.

III. The Girl Who Became a Season

Maria is not portrayed as a saint. She’s more complicated than that. She’s hungry. She’s scared. She’s witty, bold, stubborn. Sometimes she trembles; sometimes she leads. Like spring, she doesn’t arrive quietly, and she refuses to be explained away. To the villagers, she becomes something between folklore and family.

You see, stories don’t just explain our world—they anchor us to it. In cultures where time is cyclical, not linear, a miracle isn’t a glitch in the system. It’s a sign the system still works.

That’s why the villagers leave offerings. Not out of delusion. Out of recognition.

IV. Ecology of the Unexplained

This novel is structured like a field notebook left out in the rain—pages stuck with poetry, smudged with emotion, and annotated with awe. You won’t find chapters eager to wrap things up with bows. But you will find a pond in the mountains that seems to remember who’s swum there. You’ll hear a parrot say something at the perfect time. And you’ll wonder, as Leonard does: what if biology and myth are just two sides of the same leaf?

Scientific fact: dolphins use echolocation so precise they can detect a fetus in a human body from meters away.

Spiritual fact: people around the world have dreamed of talking birds for millennia.

Story fact: In Holy Parrot, both are true—because the line between the measurable and the meaningful is allowed to blur.

V. Final Entry in a Weathered Journal

By the end of Holy Parrot, you won’t be asked to choose between science and faith. You’ll be asked something far stranger:

Can you hold space for a story even when it doesn’t fit your map?

Because perhaps we’re not meant to “solve” every story. Maybe we’re meant to sit with them—like Leonard does beside Maria. Not as analysts. Not as believers. But as fellow humans. Humbled. Awake. Curious.

So if you read this book, don’t just read it for answers. Read it the way you listen to a lullaby you half-remember. Let it unsettle your certainty. Let it sing to the parts of you that still want to believe—without needing proof.

Let the parrot speak.

Beyond Boundaries Reads Book Award

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This book is a winner of the Beyond Boundaries Reads Book Award. The award honors exceptional works of literature that transcend borders—geographical, cultural, and imaginative. This award celebrates stories that connect us, foster empathy, and highlight universal themes while amplifying diverse voices from around the world. Spanning fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and youth literature, it recognizes books that inspire, challenge, and deepen our understanding of the global human experience.

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