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rachbreads 's review for:
Gabi, a Girl in Pieces
by Isabel Quintero
3.5 stars rounded up for the moments it made me LOL.
I read The House on Mango Street last month and Gabi, a Girl in Pieces read to me like the grown-up girl version of Mango Street. The tone and the writing style are vastly different, but they are similar in that they examine the lives of Latina teens, dealing with all of the things life has to throw at them and navigating life lived in a minority community. That being said, I don't think it's fair to compare this book too much to anything else because it is fully capable of standing on its own. It tackles so many different issues, with varying degrees of success, and is a great addition to the YA genre.
I'm considering the title in a new way as I think about Gabi - she really is a girl split into pieces. She's dealing with so much for a young person - her father's drug addiction, her best friend's teenage pregnancy, her younger brother's delinquency, her friend's coming out, her judgmental aunt, her own eating disorder, school, boyfriends, poetry, etc. etc. If it seems crazy that all of that (and more) was crammed into a 284 page book, you are correct. Maybe that's what Quintero intended, but the overall effect did seem a bit scattered and overly dramatic. Gabi herself is very dramatic, but it's forgivable considering she is a teenage girl. She makes so many questionable, and a few downright wrong, decisions in the course of this book, but overall she has a good heart and she's just trying to make it. She also is so funny! I enjoyed the fact that Quintero wrote this as Gabi writing in her diary so we got to spend so much time with her and her teenage sass, not to mention her beautiful poetry. I'm not a huge poetry fan myself but I enjoyed the interjection of poetry into this story and seeing the way that it moved and shaped Gabi as a person.
I think YA fans will enjoy this, and hopefully get a lot out of the diverse perspective. CW for a ton of stuff, including disordered eating, potential suicide, drug abuse, date rape.
I read The House on Mango Street last month and Gabi, a Girl in Pieces read to me like the grown-up girl version of Mango Street. The tone and the writing style are vastly different, but they are similar in that they examine the lives of Latina teens, dealing with all of the things life has to throw at them and navigating life lived in a minority community. That being said, I don't think it's fair to compare this book too much to anything else because it is fully capable of standing on its own. It tackles so many different issues, with varying degrees of success, and is a great addition to the YA genre.
I'm considering the title in a new way as I think about Gabi - she really is a girl split into pieces. She's dealing with so much for a young person - her father's drug addiction, her best friend's teenage pregnancy, her younger brother's delinquency, her friend's coming out, her judgmental aunt, her own eating disorder, school, boyfriends, poetry, etc. etc. If it seems crazy that all of that (and more) was crammed into a 284 page book, you are correct. Maybe that's what Quintero intended, but the overall effect did seem a bit scattered and overly dramatic. Gabi herself is very dramatic, but it's forgivable considering she is a teenage girl. She makes so many questionable, and a few downright wrong, decisions in the course of this book, but overall she has a good heart and she's just trying to make it. She also is so funny! I enjoyed the fact that Quintero wrote this as Gabi writing in her diary so we got to spend so much time with her and her teenage sass, not to mention her beautiful poetry. I'm not a huge poetry fan myself but I enjoyed the interjection of poetry into this story and seeing the way that it moved and shaped Gabi as a person.
I think YA fans will enjoy this, and hopefully get a lot out of the diverse perspective. CW for a ton of stuff, including disordered eating, potential suicide, drug abuse, date rape.