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A review by fishari
American Road Trip by Patrick Flores-Scott
4.0
We still can’t do half stars? I give it 3.5.
If you haven’t heard, this book has been adapted into a comic on the Webtoon app. I started reading it as a webtoon first, and then just felt like pieces of the story were missing? Or that I didn’t want to wait. Then I found out it was based on a novel and I thought “ohhh, I should DEFINITELY just give that a read.”
As far as comparing it to the webtoon, you don’t miss too much too much reading it as a comic. The writing isn’t that lofty in that there are long descriptions of things that you would have missed out on. There are some subtle things here and there, and with the webtoon—despite there being pictures—I felt like I had to re-read a couple times to get what was going on. The dialogue and other text is pulled directly from the book. The webtoon hasn’t been released in full (as of my writing this) and I may come back and give this review an update once it’s all out so that I can give them a better compare.
There’s so much that can be talked about with this book, I could 100% make a reading guide for it with all the themes that are explored. This story explores topics like: family, war, mental health, love (new and old), shitty decisions making, and brotherhood. Sacrifice is also a big theme in this book, as in, was that sacrifice even worth it? I’m talking about going to war, but I’m also talking about the choices the sister, Xochitl makes. Teodoro, who is an excellent main character, is constantly exploring individuality vs family. Where does he draw the line between him as an individual and his allegiance to his family? Growing up in an ethnic household I also struggled with this back and forth.
Things this book is not about? Er, road trips? I wouldn’t say it’s a road trip book, despite being called that, but there is a road trip in it, and it is does showcase some cool west coast cities. I just think it could have been titled something different. But who knows? Maybe there’s an editor somewhere who made that choice.
The three main characters are constantly making complicated decisions and there are times at each point that I wanted to give up on each of them. There are some moments in the story where you’re like “wait, what just happened? That happened fast, why did we just skim over that?” And then there are other moments where I’m like “woah, that was heavy.”
I guess I’m not technically the “YA audience” anymore but I generally still enjoy YA books just as much, so that’s why I read them. But occasionally there is a book that I’m like “oh, I would have liked this better as a teenager,” and this is one of those books. So that’s really just why it gets 3.5 stars from me. Also, {SPOILER} I wasn’t that happy with the ending. I wanted to see and ending where T went back to Washington State. And if I were writing it, I think I would have tried harder to make that work.
I can see myself going out of my way to recommend it to teens, especially young men of color. Books like this—that discuss the aftermath effects of war to kids who are actively being recruited in the military, that show underperforming students fail and succeed and achieve on their own terms, that give a good representation of Hispanic families—need to exist, and I’m glad it does.
I also want to say I read in one other review someone being annoyed that they had to Google how to pronounced Xochitl. Um, too bad? As someone with a hard to pronounce name, it is SO nice to see a name like that as a main character. The author could have definitely just been like, eh, Maria is fine. No, they purposely made a different choice, and that’s awesome.
Now, somebody tell me where I can try a Hatch green chili cheeseburger?
If you haven’t heard, this book has been adapted into a comic on the Webtoon app. I started reading it as a webtoon first, and then just felt like pieces of the story were missing? Or that I didn’t want to wait. Then I found out it was based on a novel and I thought “ohhh, I should DEFINITELY just give that a read.”
As far as comparing it to the webtoon, you don’t miss too much too much reading it as a comic. The writing isn’t that lofty in that there are long descriptions of things that you would have missed out on. There are some subtle things here and there, and with the webtoon—despite there being pictures—I felt like I had to re-read a couple times to get what was going on. The dialogue and other text is pulled directly from the book. The webtoon hasn’t been released in full (as of my writing this) and I may come back and give this review an update once it’s all out so that I can give them a better compare.
There’s so much that can be talked about with this book, I could 100% make a reading guide for it with all the themes that are explored. This story explores topics like: family, war, mental health, love (new and old), shitty decisions making, and brotherhood. Sacrifice is also a big theme in this book, as in, was that sacrifice even worth it? I’m talking about going to war, but I’m also talking about the choices the sister, Xochitl makes. Teodoro, who is an excellent main character, is constantly exploring individuality vs family. Where does he draw the line between him as an individual and his allegiance to his family? Growing up in an ethnic household I also struggled with this back and forth.
Things this book is not about? Er, road trips? I wouldn’t say it’s a road trip book, despite being called that, but there is a road trip in it, and it is does showcase some cool west coast cities. I just think it could have been titled something different. But who knows? Maybe there’s an editor somewhere who made that choice.
The three main characters are constantly making complicated decisions and there are times at each point that I wanted to give up on each of them. There are some moments in the story where you’re like “wait, what just happened? That happened fast, why did we just skim over that?” And then there are other moments where I’m like “woah, that was heavy.”
I guess I’m not technically the “YA audience” anymore but I generally still enjoy YA books just as much, so that’s why I read them. But occasionally there is a book that I’m like “oh, I would have liked this better as a teenager,” and this is one of those books. So that’s really just why it gets 3.5 stars from me. Also, {SPOILER} I wasn’t that happy with the ending. I wanted to see and ending where T went back to Washington State. And if I were writing it, I think I would have tried harder to make that work.
I can see myself going out of my way to recommend it to teens, especially young men of color. Books like this—that discuss the aftermath effects of war to kids who are actively being recruited in the military, that show underperforming students fail and succeed and achieve on their own terms, that give a good representation of Hispanic families—need to exist, and I’m glad it does.
I also want to say I read in one other review someone being annoyed that they had to Google how to pronounced Xochitl. Um, too bad? As someone with a hard to pronounce name, it is SO nice to see a name like that as a main character. The author could have definitely just been like, eh, Maria is fine. No, they purposely made a different choice, and that’s awesome.
Now, somebody tell me where I can try a Hatch green chili cheeseburger?