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A review by mariaslibrary
Ander and Santi Were Here by Jonny Garza Villa
emotional
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
tense
medium-paced
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
5.0
Own Voices YA is just crushing it these days. This book was such a tender coming of age love story. There's so much I loved about it.
It did start out a little slow or seemed a little long, I found myself about 60% in thinking I should really about 80% in. However, so often I read stories where the build up of the relationship goes by so fast in the book that when they encounter any challenges I don't understand why they're emotionally invested so quickly. That wasn't the case here as we really saw a romance build all summer and could really see how they were connecting more deeply over time. So I think the length and slow pace at the start really helped their relationship and emotions feel more realistic to me.
It also felt so beautiful to enjoy a book with queer and trans characters that is not just about how difficult it is to be queer and trans. We got to see queer joy and love. I loved how supportive Ander's family was of them. Ander's family members using gender neutral terms of endearment (and even insults, lol) in Spanish literally made me cry. Getting pronouns right in English is one thing but changing all the endings in Spanish seems like such an act of love for parents and abuelos to do that it really touched my heart 🩷💙
The struggle Ander had regarding their art - loving painting their cultura but not wanting to be *expected* to felt so real and there were such insightful conversations around that in the story.
I also really enjoyed the use of Spanish and Spanglish througout the book and appreciated they the author didn't just repeat the same phrase in English afterwards like I usually see. It made me seen and at home in the story. It's rare a book can make you feel like you belong. And now I'm about to cry again writing this review so maybe it's time for me to wrap this up!
(If you don't speak Spanish, you'd still get enough from the context since the Spanish is usually individual words or a sentence or less.)
It did start out a little slow or seemed a little long, I found myself about 60% in thinking I should really about 80% in. However, so often I read stories where the build up of the relationship goes by so fast in the book that when they encounter any challenges I don't understand why they're emotionally invested so quickly. That wasn't the case here as we really saw a romance build all summer and could really see how they were connecting more deeply over time. So I think the length and slow pace at the start really helped their relationship and emotions feel more realistic to me.
It also felt so beautiful to enjoy a book with queer and trans characters that is not just about how difficult it is to be queer and trans. We got to see queer joy and love. I loved how supportive Ander's family was of them. Ander's family members using gender neutral terms of endearment (and even insults, lol) in Spanish literally made me cry. Getting pronouns right in English is one thing but changing all the endings in Spanish seems like such an act of love for parents and abuelos to do that it really touched my heart 🩷💙
The struggle Ander had regarding their art - loving painting their cultura but not wanting to be *expected* to felt so real and there were such insightful conversations around that in the story.
I also really enjoyed the use of Spanish and Spanglish througout the book and appreciated they the author didn't just repeat the same phrase in English afterwards like I usually see. It made me seen and at home in the story. It's rare a book can make you feel like you belong. And now I'm about to cry again writing this review so maybe it's time for me to wrap this up!
(If you don't speak Spanish, you'd still get enough from the context since the Spanish is usually individual words or a sentence or less.)