Samantha Mabry

I have been waiting for the right time to read this book since it was released. I shouldn't have waited as long as I did. I really really liked this book. This book has all the bits of magical realism that I love with the grit that comes from living a life of poverty bound by angry love. Very few books are able to capture that mostly because they don't understand it or because they are afraid to put it out there. Mabry does a good job of going there and creating an anxious need for more even as you're reading the next words on the page. Female characters discovering their strengths and understanding their weaknesses aren't always theirs but placed upon them either by others or by themselves. The triumph of this book is each sisters's individual journey takes them to a different emotional place it brings them to one physical place. Those might be vague details but they are the ones that matter. The nuts and bolts you can find in other reviews. Read this one.… (meer)

fiction (set in modern Puerto Rico). A magical story that is alright once it gets going, but I think it would've been better with some editing--like a fairytale that improves with each practiced retelling. I'm not sure I'd have classed this as "teen fic" but that is what the library's spine label says--the main characters are teens, and some of the chapters are quick and suspenseful (with cliff-hanger endings) but other chapters drag when Lucas goes on his little detours (now I'm going to talk to my friends for a while, now I'm going to talk to my dad, now I'm going to go on a date with some random girl I'll never see again, now I'm going to go navel gaze even though my brain is largely empty of thoughts, now I'm going to absorb some of the local flavors of the island I live on) that might serve a purpose if Lucas actually progressed as a character (he doesn't really).… (meer)