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A review by nicolemhewitt
The Education of Margot Sanchez by Lilliam Rivera
5.0
This review and many more can be found on my blog: Feed Your Fiction Addiction
Margot has remade herself so that she can fit in at her boarding school. She feels like she has to follow the lead of the popular (and rich) girls, and that has led her to make some incredibly poor decisions. When she steals her father’s credit card and charges $600 worth of clothes to it, she’s forced to spend the summer working at her father’s store to pay him back. While she’s there, her two worlds collide and she can’t seem to get them to mesh. She falls for a boy named Moises—a community activist who’s trying to prevent families from getting kicked out of their building, but she struggles with admitting her feelings for a boy who she knows her friends at school wouldn’t approve of. She feels disconnected from her best friend who has moved on without her (just as Margot has moved on), and her family and the family business both seem to be floundering—and she finds out that her family is actually falling apart in more ways than she ever imagined.
This book centers on identity. How Margot struggles to be the girl everyone else expects her to be. Her friends at school, her parents, her old neighborhood friends, the boy she wants to impress, the boy she’s slowly falling for: She can’t seem to live up to any of their expectations, and she can’t find herself in all the mess. While I wasn’t a fan of many of Margot’s decisions, I felt for her in her struggle to bring both sides of her life together and find the real Margot—and be true to her.
While I don’t think that the messages in this book are earth-shattering, Margot’s unique perspective gives food for thought and introduces us to a few heavier topics (sex, drug use, etc) without making the book feel like “heavy” book. I didn’t always love Margot, but I felt like she grew by the end of the book, and I learned from her. I give this one 3.5/5 stars.
***Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. No other compensation was given and all opinions are my own.***
Margot has remade herself so that she can fit in at her boarding school. She feels like she has to follow the lead of the popular (and rich) girls, and that has led her to make some incredibly poor decisions. When she steals her father’s credit card and charges $600 worth of clothes to it, she’s forced to spend the summer working at her father’s store to pay him back. While she’s there, her two worlds collide and she can’t seem to get them to mesh. She falls for a boy named Moises—a community activist who’s trying to prevent families from getting kicked out of their building, but she struggles with admitting her feelings for a boy who she knows her friends at school wouldn’t approve of. She feels disconnected from her best friend who has moved on without her (just as Margot has moved on), and her family and the family business both seem to be floundering—and she finds out that her family is actually falling apart in more ways than she ever imagined.
This book centers on identity. How Margot struggles to be the girl everyone else expects her to be. Her friends at school, her parents, her old neighborhood friends, the boy she wants to impress, the boy she’s slowly falling for: She can’t seem to live up to any of their expectations, and she can’t find herself in all the mess. While I wasn’t a fan of many of Margot’s decisions, I felt for her in her struggle to bring both sides of her life together and find the real Margot—and be true to her.
While I don’t think that the messages in this book are earth-shattering, Margot’s unique perspective gives food for thought and introduces us to a few heavier topics (sex, drug use, etc) without making the book feel like “heavy” book. I didn’t always love Margot, but I felt like she grew by the end of the book, and I learned from her. I give this one 3.5/5 stars.
***Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. No other compensation was given and all opinions are my own.***