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A review by sasha_in_a_box
Barely Missing Everything by Matt Mendez
3.0
This book is full of pain. The pain of rejection, the pain of disappearing, the pain of failure and the unknown and the physical and, sharpest of all, the pain of disappointing yourself, over and over again, until you forget how to hope for yourself. It's relentless and difficult to read, with tiny rays of sunshine tantalizing enough to make the rest of it hurt more than before.
I super get it, there are no novels about brown lives matter and the voices of boys like Juan and JD and humans like Fabi, Mando, and Grandpa are drowned out in the world that simply doesn't give a shit about them enough to even spit on them, so this is incredibly important. But it is a very difficult novel, and I don't know how many kids would pick it up. I hope that this book finds its way into the hands of a kid just like Juan and JD and gives them a tiny bite of agency that makes a difference.
I super get it, there are no novels about brown lives matter and the voices of boys like Juan and JD and humans like Fabi, Mando, and Grandpa are drowned out in the world that simply doesn't give a shit about them enough to even spit on them, so this is incredibly important. But it is a very difficult novel, and I don't know how many kids would pick it up. I hope that this book finds its way into the hands of a kid just like Juan and JD and gives them a tiny bite of agency that makes a difference.