A review by oliverreeds
Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland

emotional hopeful medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

the writing style in this book is impeccable, and the characters are incredibly believable. this author writes teenagers so well and knows how to breathe life into her narratives. her writing reminds of benjamin alire saenz specifically in the way that she weaves in her families ideas of the world in short chapters and guides her readers to view certain characters and certain issues in a productive way. these are the parts of this book that i greatly enjoyed, and i would not have guessed it was this authors first novel. sometimes, however, the dialogue and scenes would be split in odd places– almost like the author didn't know what she wanted to write. it was honestly distracting and annoying to have the scenes split up like this when they would have workd better as cohesive dialogue trains that moved from one person to the next and one topic to the next. the chapter breaks just weren't necessary. i also felt like this was two separate books. the first section is all about sia's life, her mother, her grief, and her relationships, and then like 200 pages in there are just... aliens? and the aliens aren't a spoiler because they're on the back of the book, but they aren't actually adressed for a while, which was just weird for me. this also made the climax of the book move incredibly quickly in a way that i don't think worked for this particular novel. the ending was so fast that i didn't feel like there was any resolution until
everything was kind of back to normal
. the only reason i rated this book so highly is because the author is just honestly incredible at writing. i was willing to deal with the weird plot just to know more about these characters, just to live in the mythology of sia's life and learn the way she sees the world. would i read this book again? probably not. am i glad i read it? yes. 100% because even though some of the metaphors were a little heavy-handed, i genuinely think this is a well-crafted book that provides SO much information and characterization of the hardships faced and culture cultivated by people of color even though our society likes to believe everyone is equal in the eyes of the law and that any culture other than that of white people is bland in comparison. 
Expand filter menu Content Warnings