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djezmino 's review for:
Don't Date Rosa Santos
by Nina Moreno
The lullaby of my life is that to know the sea is to know love, but to love us is to lose everything. We’re cursed, they still whisper, but it’s by an island, the sea, or out own stubborn hearts, I don’t know.
3.5 stars
Rosa Santos is an bookish, ambitious student, who has secretly applied for a university that offers a semester abroad in Cuba, where her family’s from. Her grandma Mimi doesn’t know because she wouldn’t approve. Her mother doesn’t know because she’s never home. She travels because being home in Port Coral reminds her too much of the past.
That past is an important part of this story, which is one of diaspora, the pain that comes with it, but also one of curses and witchcraft. Both Mimi and Rosa’s mom lost their husbands to the sea, which is why people whisper that the Santos women are cursed. Which is also why Rosa is horrified when she starts falling for handsome sailor Alex.
Now that I’m writing this down, it sounds like a pretty good story and I’m wondering where it went wrong... It wasn’t badly written, it was not like anything I’ve ever read before. I really liked the elements of magic and witchcraft, because I feel like you almost can’t write about Latina women without it.
Perhaps the story was too ambitious. It was a romance, but also a family tale, a tale about diaspora, a coming of age story, but also a tale of magic, which all happened while Rosa was planning a wedding, a festival. You get me?
Maybe that’s a bit too much to really pull off in 230 pages.
3.5 stars
Rosa Santos is an bookish, ambitious student, who has secretly applied for a university that offers a semester abroad in Cuba, where her family’s from. Her grandma Mimi doesn’t know because she wouldn’t approve. Her mother doesn’t know because she’s never home. She travels because being home in Port Coral reminds her too much of the past.
That past is an important part of this story, which is one of diaspora, the pain that comes with it, but also one of curses and witchcraft. Both Mimi and Rosa’s mom lost their husbands to the sea, which is why people whisper that the Santos women are cursed. Which is also why Rosa is horrified when she starts falling for handsome sailor Alex.
Now that I’m writing this down, it sounds like a pretty good story and I’m wondering where it went wrong... It wasn’t badly written, it was not like anything I’ve ever read before. I really liked the elements of magic and witchcraft, because I feel like you almost can’t write about Latina women without it.
Perhaps the story was too ambitious. It was a romance, but also a family tale, a tale about diaspora, a coming of age story, but also a tale of magic, which all happened while Rosa was planning a wedding, a festival. You get me?
Maybe that’s a bit too much to really pull off in 230 pages.