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A review by jackiehorne
Enjoy the Dance by Heidi Cullinan
3.0
2.5 A disappointing entry from a writer who is otherwise an auto-buy for me. Cullinan's books are usually quite character-driven, and the protagonists here are quite appealing: a white kindergarten teacher who spent years in the foster care system, and a Mexican-American who is working three jobs to support himself, his undocumented parents, and his sister's three children. The two live in the same building in St. Paul, Minnesota, but don't really interact until a teen from the dance studio where Tomás works shows up on their doorstep, beaten and bleeding, and Spencer takes him in. The boy, Duon, was beaten by his cousins for being gay, and Spencer ends up becoming a "suitable other," something a little less than a foster parent, to him. Spencer is cautious, quiet, and shy, and Tomás is so busy working that the two have very little time to spend together, but they eventually manage to develop an attachment.
Their relationship, though, takes second place to the book's efforts to inform its readers about the problems of foster care system for gay teens, as well as about the plight of the undocumented, which leads to a book that often reads more like nonfiction than fiction. And because the story unfolds over eight months (the eight months between when Minnesota voted against an amendment banning same-sex marriage and the Supreme Court's overturning of DOMA), there is a lot of telling, summarizing of events over time, rather than showing our two protagonists actually interacting with one another. When Cullinan does show her protagonists in scenes with one another, those scenes are great. I only wish there had been more of them.
Their relationship, though, takes second place to the book's efforts to inform its readers about the problems of foster care system for gay teens, as well as about the plight of the undocumented, which leads to a book that often reads more like nonfiction than fiction. And because the story unfolds over eight months (the eight months between when Minnesota voted against an amendment banning same-sex marriage and the Supreme Court's overturning of DOMA), there is a lot of telling, summarizing of events over time, rather than showing our two protagonists actually interacting with one another. When Cullinan does show her protagonists in scenes with one another, those scenes are great. I only wish there had been more of them.