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mariahistryingtoread's review against another edition
2.0
*I'm reading all the 2022 FL Teen Reads. This is Book #4 out of 15 read. This is the #3 spot in terms of quality so far. If you want to see a complete list altogether in one place in order of best to worst check out my florida-teen-reads-2022 tag. *
I immediately knew that A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow wasn't going to be my cup of tea.
Unless there is some kind of social issue to draw me in like mental health representation or tackling racism or just anything that suggests some kind of deeper dialogue about literally any topic other than average teenage angst I avoid contemporary. I find it boring otherwise.
So literally from the synopsis I expected, at most, a decent time unless something out of this world was to occur whether that be in execution or plot development. Or on the other side of the spectrum, an abhorrent time if the book proved to be terrible in some way.
I was right in my assessment.
A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow is a perfectly serviceable read. It is exactly what it presents itself to be - no more, no less. Lila is sent away, she finds herself and she falls for a cute boy along the way. It's normal teen romance fodder you'd see in your average CW show.
I do give points for how deeply intertwined the Cuban culture is into the story as Lila's and subsequently the authors' love for their heritage shines through authentically, it is not enough to save the story from how generic the whole thing feels.
The side characters all have traits certainly, but they lack any kind of depth. Jules is an out of this world singer songwriter with an amazing band. Lila likes her immediately for her take charge attitude. They have one conversation in which we are not privy to any kind of dialogue. Lila simply rattles off commonalities between the two and that is supposed to be enough for us to count them as close friends. Any other time the two are in each others' presence is in a group setting. She's Bi too, which I'm all for casual representation, but it felt like we were just checking off boxes for a 'cool' girl. Like she's so edgy wearing her clothes that totally shouldn't go together but somehow she makes it work and she has dyed hair and listens to records and doesn't take BS from anybody plus she's Bi because that adds to how headstrong she is - her sexuality can't be limited. It's a played out archetype at this point, the punk rock sexually fluid white girl.
I'm not saying that female characters like this are wrong inherently or that there aren't women like this in real life or that women who have these traits are bad. What I'm saying is that there is a definite trend in YA nowadays to commodify diversity because teens lack the critical analysis to question the representation they're getting and will eat it up as long as it has queer characters or black characters or whathaveyou without considering if it's actually good. These kinds of books sell and the potential impact of broad stereotypes, one note characterizations and surface level exploration is ignored by publishers because the money is what matters. You see this a lot if you're plugged into Booktok or Booktwitter.
I'm not knocking the inclusion because Jules isn't egregious enough to make me question the integrity of the author - sometimes a character is so badly done you can tell without a doubt the author does not know what they're doing - in this case I'm purely critiquing the execution as regardless of intention it certainly feels like Namey only wanted brownie points which is never a good thing if you genuinely desire to be inclusive.
I guess my overall point here is that Jules being such a minor character is what bothered me more than anything. I would not have cared that she was written this way if we saw more of her. As it stands because of how little she was given to do she came off as a caricature rather than a fully fleshed out individual. All I could see was a quota fulfilled whenever she appeared.
Her boyfriend Remy says maybe five lines the whole book despite being maybe Orion's best friend and his biggest claim to fame seems to be simply dating Jules. Oh, also his family runs a pub that he sometimes works at that the characters never bother to go to. He’s Black which further added to the checklist vibes I got since he didn’t really feel Black in any way that mattered. Obviously, being Black is a varied experience with no one set way to act. Still, it’s like that famous quote (obviously I’m repurposing it a bit here), I know a Black character when I see it and this guy does not at all seem Black.
Lila's cousin Gordon is part of their motley group yet he never has any real interaction. He's always appearing suddenly to say one line to remind the reader he's there then rushing off the page to do something else. He might as well not even be friends with the lot of them for all the contact they had even though it seems they're childhood friends. Similar to Jules, he has one single honest conversation with Lila when she first arrives just to establish the two have a good relationship then they never speak seriously again.
I've seen reviewers say Lila was entitled and selfish and while I can kind of see where they're coming from I largely felt like Lila was just a regular teenage girl. By that I mean, she was pretty much a blank slate. I'd have actually liked if she was more self centered or rude as at least she'd have differentiated herself. Lila could bake very well, but that's something anyone can theoretically do. It reflected little on her personality.
Her whole arc was supposed to be about confronting her controlling attitude and learning to live with the loss of control. Except the entire book I never got the impression she was controlling. The examples used are her relationships with her ex and her ex best friend going up in flames, but I actually felt like those situations were on them not Lila.
Like any teenager Lila had her whole life planned out. Stefanie would go to the local college as part of their nursing program. Lila would take over her family bakery. Similarly, Andres had to attend school in Miami and take certain classes and they'd all move in together. The thing is while I can understand why Andres and Lila balked at it the onus falls on them to speak up about not wanting it.
Most teenagers go through this phase. They don't know enough about the world to know how plans and life have a way of knocking you down so they craft these elaborate fantasies of always living in the same neighborhood with their best friends and the person they're sure is their one true love even though they've been dating like six months and everything is sunshine and rainbows forever more. Some people are lucky enough to be able to make it work. In general it's highly unlikely that it'll all turn out that way once reality actually sets in.
Lila had no way of knowing that these two were no longer on the same page. She'd been ruminating on this 'plan' for several years at this point and up until very recently everything was fine from her perspective. Andres and Stefanie both suddenly drop a bomb on her and act like it's her fault for being so inflexible they couldn't tell her, but I see no indication that she was the horrible, overly regimented monster they seemed to think she was. Stefanie says she was scared because she knew that Lila would try to convince her not to go on her mission trip. Lila is adamant that she would have supported her. And honestly? I believe Lila.
What a horrible way of looking at someone who you purport to be your best friend. Stefanie really thought that lowly of her, she’d try to actively sabotage her best friends’ dreams?
The framing is all about how Lila is to blame for railroading others, not about how messed up it is that Stefanie has been lying to her so long. I don't think Lila is in the clear here. You don't get a pass for bad behavior purely because you 'didn't know it was wrong', however, as someone who lost a friendship where I was the Stefanie, you can't blame someone entirely for eroding boundaries you only made in your head. Like I said before it's rare that teenagers don't make plans like this for the future and Stefanie absolutely did participate in the process before so to me that says that the majority of the issue is on her for not voicing her change in circumstances sooner.
Similarly, Andres has been dating Lila for three years. He never expressed any opposition in all that time yet it’s Lila who needs to chill out?
All 3 definitely deserve some grace because, at the end of the day, they’re all just a bunch of kids trying to navigate major interpersonal conflict. It’s definitely a hardwon skill to negotiate limits and communicate a problem gracefully. That being said, I didn’t appreciate how Lila seemed to be catching so much flack for simply being driven. They had every right not to want what she did, but there needed to be more evidence of her actively ignoring their needs or bulldozing their wants.
As it stands, I never got the vibe that Lila was so unreasonable that you weren’t allowed to disagree with her for fear of a fight or meltdown. How did they expect her to change if they never gave her the opportunity to readjust?
Stefanie forgoes college for a mission trip. I had serious issues with this plot point for several reasons.
Mission trips are overwhelmingly self-serving and racist. There are plenty of poor, ‘deserving’ people within America that need help especially nowadays where the average person is at most two unforeseen setbacks away from being out on the streets. The only reason to go to a different country is because these trips are operating off the spurious notion that these people need to be saved from their savage ways by the grace, and wisdom of the United States, namely through the spread of Christianity. It’s an evolved form of colonialism.
It’s especially telling that the countries being aided are typically ones that the US has had a hand in destabilizing in the first place. Thus, people want credit for meddling even further in a situation that they contributed to on some level since the people who participate in mission trips often are the ones that voted in the politicians that chose to sabotage those other countries in the first place.
It’s not about the people who need help. It’s all about making those who go on these trips feel good about themselves while getting a free trip out of the deal. Real outreach involves a lot of time and effort figuring out what exactly the community needs, not just what the mission wants to give. And once again, the primary focus is often to ensure that the barbaric practices of the 'Third World' are abandoned in favor of the good, holy Christian God.
Now to be fair not all mission trips are religious. Not all religious mission trips are harmful. The problem is that at this point the majority are flawed in some way because the people who participate largely are the kinds of people that are not concerned with the impact of their actions. Plus, we've only recently begun to be more critical of these aid efforts and change is a slow process in general.
Stefanie could be on a good mission. One where the church has done their research and has invested real resources into aiding the area. But, there's no way of knowing because we never get any details about her mission trip.
We know she's in Africa - it takes way too long to specify what part of Africa she's going to, even then we only get Ghana which is saying literally nothing since Ghana is a whole country not a single city- and there's some casually racist allusions to Africa not having electricity and that's about it. Stefanie doesn't talk to Lila until the very end of the book so we don't get any updates in the interim. Then once they do talk, Lila simply says Stefanie tells her about Ghana with no insight as to what her experience actually is like.
So what am I supposed to think? For all intents and purposes her mission is just like every other problematic Christian mission trip: It a feelgood joke set up entirely so a bunch of teenagers can post pictures of Black and brown kids without their consent to their Instagrams while building houses that the people don't need barring individuals in the actual community from learning skills that could benefit them long term when Black and brown kids in their own neighborhoods are starving.
Obviously, Stefanie is Cuban, but you can definitely be a minority and exploit other minorities or engage in behaviors against your own self interest. Think Stacy Dash being a right wing news pundit or Caitlin Jenner supporting Trump until he enacted policies that personally affected her rights.
Sending Stefanie on a mission trip was a cheap way of trying to make Lila out to be the bad guy. Like, look at Stefanie being so selfless as to live like a peasant for years and Lila is the witch who has a problem with that. The fact that mission trips are no longer seen as - or rather should not be seen as - an inherently good thing to do was ignored.
Lila's relationship with Orion is okay. They're cute, but I wasn't really sold on their infatuation being so strong Lila would consider leaving her entire family behind in a different country for him. Especially when they didn't officially ever start dating before it was time for the third act conflict and when they did finally admit their feelings for one another Lila was conflicted because Andres suddenly contacted her. It felt too shaky a foundation for her to up and move her life for. If they'd been dating most of the summer it'd be one thing. Instead, like two weeks before she's supposed to go home they're still playing the 'what are we' game.
I also thought hinging most of such a big life change at such a young age on a boy was silly. Yeah, the book tries to add in something about attending a culinary school, but I didn't buy it at all. Her finally coming to enjoy England was so rooted in Orion I genuinely didn't get the sense at all that she'd have moved there if he didn't exist. I wanted to feel like she was making this decision based on what was best for her and rather than her motivation being wanting to be with a boy. Again, she's 17. She's barely dating Orion. She literally got out of a major relationship that lasted THREE YEARS of her core adolescent development. Jumping into another serious monogamous relationship so soon had rebound written all over it.
Let me be clear, I don’t think everyone needs to date around or casually date when they’re young. Some people, like myself honestly, aren’t interested in that scene. If you’re only into serious monogamy, more power to you. But, taking everything into account in this situation I felt like Lila was doing herself a huge disservice not taking more time for herself.
There’s a thing teased early on that Orion has a girlfriend only for the girl to ditch him. He’s not broken up about it since the two had been on like two dates at the time. I would have preferred if he was in a serious relationship like Lila, got dumped and she Lila spent the book growing past their respective heartbreaks as solid friends. Then at the end they could choose to take more time for themselves to be sure, with a hopeful promise of someday. I think it would have been a great parallel to Andres breaking up with Lila. She couldn’t understand how he could say he loved her yet dump her anyways. This way she’d understand.
Also, I get that her family was so worried about her they’d be overjoyed that she was able to find herself, but I do not at all think that a family as close knit as this would so easily accept that she’d be moving away from everything she’d ever known. Even if they would be overall supportive I don’t at all think it’s realistic that her parents didn’t discuss logistics or practicalities of doing so considering her age.
Long story short, even if it didn’t have the racism, I’d still think it was only okay at best. The romance is lackluster. The supporting cast is massively underwritten. Very few events actually occur. I think Lila’s arc unintentionally has misogynistic roots to it. All in all it's an early 2000s romcom in novel form. You get what you pay for and I checked this out from the library.
I fully expect teenage girls to eat this up. I hope that they’re able to critically consider everything involving the mission and I’m disappointed that in 2022 we still have to have these conversations about depictions of Africa, but overall I don’t think this book is going to be very influential so I don’t think it’s a big enough deal to get that angry about it. Or maybe I’m just too burnt out to be super upset about racism of this kind since it’s so common. Who knows.
As far as the FL Teen Reads for 2022 goes, color me unsurprised that racism got a pass considering the way Florida has been trending the last few years.
I immediately knew that A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow wasn't going to be my cup of tea.
Unless there is some kind of social issue to draw me in like mental health representation or tackling racism or just anything that suggests some kind of deeper dialogue about literally any topic other than average teenage angst I avoid contemporary. I find it boring otherwise.
So literally from the synopsis I expected, at most, a decent time unless something out of this world was to occur whether that be in execution or plot development. Or on the other side of the spectrum, an abhorrent time if the book proved to be terrible in some way.
I was right in my assessment.
A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow is a perfectly serviceable read. It is exactly what it presents itself to be - no more, no less. Lila is sent away, she finds herself and she falls for a cute boy along the way. It's normal teen romance fodder you'd see in your average CW show.
I do give points for how deeply intertwined the Cuban culture is into the story as Lila's and subsequently the authors' love for their heritage shines through authentically, it is not enough to save the story from how generic the whole thing feels.
The side characters all have traits certainly, but they lack any kind of depth. Jules is an out of this world singer songwriter with an amazing band. Lila likes her immediately for her take charge attitude. They have one conversation in which we are not privy to any kind of dialogue. Lila simply rattles off commonalities between the two and that is supposed to be enough for us to count them as close friends. Any other time the two are in each others' presence is in a group setting. She's Bi too, which I'm all for casual representation, but it felt like we were just checking off boxes for a 'cool' girl. Like she's so edgy wearing her clothes that totally shouldn't go together but somehow she makes it work and she has dyed hair and listens to records and doesn't take BS from anybody plus she's Bi because that adds to how headstrong she is - her sexuality can't be limited. It's a played out archetype at this point, the punk rock sexually fluid white girl.
I'm not saying that female characters like this are wrong inherently or that there aren't women like this in real life or that women who have these traits are bad. What I'm saying is that there is a definite trend in YA nowadays to commodify diversity because teens lack the critical analysis to question the representation they're getting and will eat it up as long as it has queer characters or black characters or whathaveyou without considering if it's actually good. These kinds of books sell and the potential impact of broad stereotypes, one note characterizations and surface level exploration is ignored by publishers because the money is what matters. You see this a lot if you're plugged into Booktok or Booktwitter.
I'm not knocking the inclusion because Jules isn't egregious enough to make me question the integrity of the author - sometimes a character is so badly done you can tell without a doubt the author does not know what they're doing - in this case I'm purely critiquing the execution as regardless of intention it certainly feels like Namey only wanted brownie points which is never a good thing if you genuinely desire to be inclusive.
I guess my overall point here is that Jules being such a minor character is what bothered me more than anything. I would not have cared that she was written this way if we saw more of her. As it stands because of how little she was given to do she came off as a caricature rather than a fully fleshed out individual. All I could see was a quota fulfilled whenever she appeared.
Her boyfriend Remy says maybe five lines the whole book despite being maybe Orion's best friend and his biggest claim to fame seems to be simply dating Jules. Oh, also his family runs a pub that he sometimes works at that the characters never bother to go to. He’s Black which further added to the checklist vibes I got since he didn’t really feel Black in any way that mattered. Obviously, being Black is a varied experience with no one set way to act. Still, it’s like that famous quote (obviously I’m repurposing it a bit here), I know a Black character when I see it and this guy does not at all seem Black.
Lila's cousin Gordon is part of their motley group yet he never has any real interaction. He's always appearing suddenly to say one line to remind the reader he's there then rushing off the page to do something else. He might as well not even be friends with the lot of them for all the contact they had even though it seems they're childhood friends. Similar to Jules, he has one single honest conversation with Lila when she first arrives just to establish the two have a good relationship then they never speak seriously again.
I've seen reviewers say Lila was entitled and selfish and while I can kind of see where they're coming from I largely felt like Lila was just a regular teenage girl. By that I mean, she was pretty much a blank slate. I'd have actually liked if she was more self centered or rude as at least she'd have differentiated herself. Lila could bake very well, but that's something anyone can theoretically do. It reflected little on her personality.
Her whole arc was supposed to be about confronting her controlling attitude and learning to live with the loss of control. Except the entire book I never got the impression she was controlling. The examples used are her relationships with her ex and her ex best friend going up in flames, but I actually felt like those situations were on them not Lila.
Like any teenager Lila had her whole life planned out. Stefanie would go to the local college as part of their nursing program. Lila would take over her family bakery. Similarly, Andres had to attend school in Miami and take certain classes and they'd all move in together. The thing is while I can understand why Andres and Lila balked at it the onus falls on them to speak up about not wanting it.
Most teenagers go through this phase. They don't know enough about the world to know how plans and life have a way of knocking you down so they craft these elaborate fantasies of always living in the same neighborhood with their best friends and the person they're sure is their one true love even though they've been dating like six months and everything is sunshine and rainbows forever more. Some people are lucky enough to be able to make it work. In general it's highly unlikely that it'll all turn out that way once reality actually sets in.
Lila had no way of knowing that these two were no longer on the same page. She'd been ruminating on this 'plan' for several years at this point and up until very recently everything was fine from her perspective. Andres and Stefanie both suddenly drop a bomb on her and act like it's her fault for being so inflexible they couldn't tell her, but I see no indication that she was the horrible, overly regimented monster they seemed to think she was. Stefanie says she was scared because she knew that Lila would try to convince her not to go on her mission trip. Lila is adamant that she would have supported her. And honestly? I believe Lila.
What a horrible way of looking at someone who you purport to be your best friend. Stefanie really thought that lowly of her, she’d try to actively sabotage her best friends’ dreams?
The framing is all about how Lila is to blame for railroading others, not about how messed up it is that Stefanie has been lying to her so long. I don't think Lila is in the clear here. You don't get a pass for bad behavior purely because you 'didn't know it was wrong', however, as someone who lost a friendship where I was the Stefanie, you can't blame someone entirely for eroding boundaries you only made in your head. Like I said before it's rare that teenagers don't make plans like this for the future and Stefanie absolutely did participate in the process before so to me that says that the majority of the issue is on her for not voicing her change in circumstances sooner.
Similarly, Andres has been dating Lila for three years. He never expressed any opposition in all that time yet it’s Lila who needs to chill out?
All 3 definitely deserve some grace because, at the end of the day, they’re all just a bunch of kids trying to navigate major interpersonal conflict. It’s definitely a hardwon skill to negotiate limits and communicate a problem gracefully. That being said, I didn’t appreciate how Lila seemed to be catching so much flack for simply being driven. They had every right not to want what she did, but there needed to be more evidence of her actively ignoring their needs or bulldozing their wants.
As it stands, I never got the vibe that Lila was so unreasonable that you weren’t allowed to disagree with her for fear of a fight or meltdown. How did they expect her to change if they never gave her the opportunity to readjust?
Stefanie forgoes college for a mission trip. I had serious issues with this plot point for several reasons.
Mission trips are overwhelmingly self-serving and racist. There are plenty of poor, ‘deserving’ people within America that need help especially nowadays where the average person is at most two unforeseen setbacks away from being out on the streets. The only reason to go to a different country is because these trips are operating off the spurious notion that these people need to be saved from their savage ways by the grace, and wisdom of the United States, namely through the spread of Christianity. It’s an evolved form of colonialism.
It’s especially telling that the countries being aided are typically ones that the US has had a hand in destabilizing in the first place. Thus, people want credit for meddling even further in a situation that they contributed to on some level since the people who participate in mission trips often are the ones that voted in the politicians that chose to sabotage those other countries in the first place.
It’s not about the people who need help. It’s all about making those who go on these trips feel good about themselves while getting a free trip out of the deal. Real outreach involves a lot of time and effort figuring out what exactly the community needs, not just what the mission wants to give. And once again, the primary focus is often to ensure that the barbaric practices of the 'Third World' are abandoned in favor of the good, holy Christian God.
Now to be fair not all mission trips are religious. Not all religious mission trips are harmful. The problem is that at this point the majority are flawed in some way because the people who participate largely are the kinds of people that are not concerned with the impact of their actions. Plus, we've only recently begun to be more critical of these aid efforts and change is a slow process in general.
Stefanie could be on a good mission. One where the church has done their research and has invested real resources into aiding the area. But, there's no way of knowing because we never get any details about her mission trip.
We know she's in Africa - it takes way too long to specify what part of Africa she's going to, even then we only get Ghana which is saying literally nothing since Ghana is a whole country not a single city- and there's some casually racist allusions to Africa not having electricity and that's about it. Stefanie doesn't talk to Lila until the very end of the book so we don't get any updates in the interim. Then once they do talk, Lila simply says Stefanie tells her about Ghana with no insight as to what her experience actually is like.
So what am I supposed to think? For all intents and purposes her mission is just like every other problematic Christian mission trip: It a feelgood joke set up entirely so a bunch of teenagers can post pictures of Black and brown kids without their consent to their Instagrams while building houses that the people don't need barring individuals in the actual community from learning skills that could benefit them long term when Black and brown kids in their own neighborhoods are starving.
Obviously, Stefanie is Cuban, but you can definitely be a minority and exploit other minorities or engage in behaviors against your own self interest. Think Stacy Dash being a right wing news pundit or Caitlin Jenner supporting Trump until he enacted policies that personally affected her rights.
Sending Stefanie on a mission trip was a cheap way of trying to make Lila out to be the bad guy. Like, look at Stefanie being so selfless as to live like a peasant for years and Lila is the witch who has a problem with that. The fact that mission trips are no longer seen as - or rather should not be seen as - an inherently good thing to do was ignored.
Lila's relationship with Orion is okay. They're cute, but I wasn't really sold on their infatuation being so strong Lila would consider leaving her entire family behind in a different country for him. Especially when they didn't officially ever start dating before it was time for the third act conflict and when they did finally admit their feelings for one another Lila was conflicted because Andres suddenly contacted her. It felt too shaky a foundation for her to up and move her life for. If they'd been dating most of the summer it'd be one thing. Instead, like two weeks before she's supposed to go home they're still playing the 'what are we' game.
I also thought hinging most of such a big life change at such a young age on a boy was silly. Yeah, the book tries to add in something about attending a culinary school, but I didn't buy it at all. Her finally coming to enjoy England was so rooted in Orion I genuinely didn't get the sense at all that she'd have moved there if he didn't exist. I wanted to feel like she was making this decision based on what was best for her and rather than her motivation being wanting to be with a boy. Again, she's 17. She's barely dating Orion. She literally got out of a major relationship that lasted THREE YEARS of her core adolescent development. Jumping into another serious monogamous relationship so soon had rebound written all over it.
Let me be clear, I don’t think everyone needs to date around or casually date when they’re young. Some people, like myself honestly, aren’t interested in that scene. If you’re only into serious monogamy, more power to you. But, taking everything into account in this situation I felt like Lila was doing herself a huge disservice not taking more time for herself.
There’s a thing teased early on that Orion has a girlfriend only for the girl to ditch him. He’s not broken up about it since the two had been on like two dates at the time. I would have preferred if he was in a serious relationship like Lila, got dumped and she Lila spent the book growing past their respective heartbreaks as solid friends. Then at the end they could choose to take more time for themselves to be sure, with a hopeful promise of someday. I think it would have been a great parallel to Andres breaking up with Lila. She couldn’t understand how he could say he loved her yet dump her anyways. This way she’d understand.
Also, I get that her family was so worried about her they’d be overjoyed that she was able to find herself, but I do not at all think that a family as close knit as this would so easily accept that she’d be moving away from everything she’d ever known. Even if they would be overall supportive I don’t at all think it’s realistic that her parents didn’t discuss logistics or practicalities of doing so considering her age.
Long story short, even if it didn’t have the racism, I’d still think it was only okay at best. The romance is lackluster. The supporting cast is massively underwritten. Very few events actually occur. I think Lila’s arc unintentionally has misogynistic roots to it. All in all it's an early 2000s romcom in novel form. You get what you pay for and I checked this out from the library.
I fully expect teenage girls to eat this up. I hope that they’re able to critically consider everything involving the mission and I’m disappointed that in 2022 we still have to have these conversations about depictions of Africa, but overall I don’t think this book is going to be very influential so I don’t think it’s a big enough deal to get that angry about it. Or maybe I’m just too burnt out to be super upset about racism of this kind since it’s so common. Who knows.
As far as the FL Teen Reads for 2022 goes, color me unsurprised that racism got a pass considering the way Florida has been trending the last few years.
bellsandjingles's review against another edition
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
5.0
reneelewis22's review against another edition
4.0
I enjoyed this. I was expecting more of a YA romance but definitely made me cry too.
jladams's review against another edition
emotional
funny
lighthearted
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
3.5
kkaste's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
p1amelie's review against another edition
2.0
ah yes, this girl is cuban, loves to bake and goes for runs. i’m reminded of this fact every 5 pages. if you asked me what happened i would not be able to tell you. this was a cute wholesome book and orion is such a lovely burst of joy with emotional ups and downs but the book itself it just got very repetitive. i hope the adaptation does it some justice.
also someone teach the author africa is a continent and not a city, town or country. not to just condense it down, especially when talking about someone doing charity work there.
also someone teach the author africa is a continent and not a city, town or country. not to just condense it down, especially when talking about someone doing charity work there.
c_ab_bage's review against another edition
4.0
i’ve been starting a habit of keeping “background book” going for whenever i want a break from a super heavy book or my annotation, and this was the first iteration of that. i have to say, it worked perfectly. such a lighthearted read, super lovable couple, a fun cast of characters— it was everything i needed :)
sunny_r's review against another edition
4.0
The writing style was very descriptive, if a bit pretentious, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. It was cute and light for the most part (thought it occasionally dealt with some deeper, more sensitive topics). I liked the characters and how flawed, realistic and dramatic Lila — like many other teenage girls her age — could be.