Scan barcode
A review by elizabethnicole
Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo
4.0
I kind of have a lot of thoughts about this book but I'll try to summarize my thoughts so that they don't end up being super long. First off I will start with the things that I liked about this book. I like the storyline and how it was about two girls that didn't know each other existed and how they found one another after their father passed away. I liked that there was LGBTQ+ representation that wasn't the main point of the plot it was just there and it was expected and there was no like big flashy points about it. And I liked how they talked about a lot of really serious issues throughout the novel. I also liked that it was presented in a unique format, in verse, because I haven't really read a lot of books that are like this. I also liked that it was a quick read which i needed after struggling with my reading lately. It took me about 4-5 hours of reading time.
Now comes the things that I didn't really like about this book. First of all, it was supposed to be in verse but some of the poems still felt like it was being told in a regular format. That would be fine if it was consistent, but it wasn't. Every once in awhile unexpectedly the poems would suddenly shift to being completely in verse and like it would have all these metaphors and things and it would throw me off. Also it was in two girls' points of view and I didn't know that at first so when it suddenly switched I was super confused. I don't fault that to the book itself because I could have gotten that from the description, but I didn't like that when the girls eventually meet up in the middle of the book that it suddenly starts switching back and forth for no rhyme and reason and there's not a consistent amount of poems between each and every girl so you never really know which point of view it's going to be coming from. I always had to look at context clues and see what words were being mentioned to figure out what girl it was coming from. Like if it was talking about the girl's aunt or the Dominican Republic I knew it was Camino for the most part, but if it was talking about the girl's girlfriend, New York or mom I knew it was talking about Yahaira. It would be nice if it labeled in between poems better because it took away from my enjoyment a lot.
Now comes the things that I didn't really like about this book. First of all, it was supposed to be in verse but some of the poems still felt like it was being told in a regular format. That would be fine if it was consistent, but it wasn't. Every once in awhile unexpectedly the poems would suddenly shift to being completely in verse and like it would have all these metaphors and things and it would throw me off. Also it was in two girls' points of view and I didn't know that at first so when it suddenly switched I was super confused. I don't fault that to the book itself because I could have gotten that from the description, but I didn't like that when the girls eventually meet up in the middle of the book that it suddenly starts switching back and forth for no rhyme and reason and there's not a consistent amount of poems between each and every girl so you never really know which point of view it's going to be coming from. I always had to look at context clues and see what words were being mentioned to figure out what girl it was coming from. Like if it was talking about the girl's aunt or the Dominican Republic I knew it was Camino for the most part, but if it was talking about the girl's girlfriend, New York or mom I knew it was talking about Yahaira. It would be nice if it labeled in between poems better because it took away from my enjoyment a lot.