A review by jenniferdeguzman
Maya's Notebook by Isabel Allende

3.0

I was never quite convinced by Maya's voice. She's supposed to be a teenager from Berkeley, the kind of girl I encounter every day, as I work a block from Berkeley High School (where Maya goes). Some of it may be in the translation; it was done by a Canadian translator who lives in England, not exactly someone in touch with young Americans. There were a few instances that stood out to me as not being off, like the phrase "sewer punks" (it should be "gutter punks") or Maya calling a bathroom a "washroom." The first-person narration seems to try to explain its own idiosyncrasies; Maya stresses several times that she picked up her "huge vocabulary" from her grandmother making her learn new words.

The plot itself feels a bit incidental, with a few points feeling like they resolve simply because they have to.