I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sanchez (Alfred A Knopf, 2017)
Synopsis Perfect Mexican daughters do not go away to college. And they do not move out of their parents’ house after high school graduation. Perfect Mexican daughters never abandon their family.But Julia is not your perfect Mexican daughter. That was Olga’s role. Then a tragic accident on the busiest street in Chicago leaves Olga dead and Julia left behind to reassemble the shattered pieces of her family. And no one seems to acknowledge that Julia is broken, too. Instead, her mother seems to channel her grief into pointing out every possible way Julia has failed. But it’s not long before Julia discovers that Olga might not have been as perfect as everyone thought. With the help of her best friend Lorena, and her first kiss, first love, first everything boyfriend Connor, Julia is determined to find out. Was Olga really what she seemed? Or was there more to her sister’s story? And either way, how can Julia even attempt to live up to a seemingly impossible ideal? (Goodreads)
- It took forever to pick up the pace. The first 160 pages were spent with her bemoaning her life. It picks up for 20 pages, then spirals down again to another rant fest on how terrible her life is.
- I’m starting to think that the way Julia was written and how she is supposed to be perceived is deliberate. There are unlikable characters that you root for, and there are unlikable characters that you don’t really care for. Julia falls in the latter. All she did was complain, and while I understand that she is a teenager and everyone has a different familial life, did the author really have to spend a lot of pages to establish how terrible Julia thinks her life and everything around her really are? I think a chapter or two would be sufficient, and the story can move on to what the synopsis promised.
+/- The whole rambling feeling of the book, with Julia blurting out sentence after sentence, and thought after thought sounds like how a normal person would usually converse with themselves. However, it wasn’t a format that I enjoyed, mostly because it took forever for the story to go somewhere.
As of writing, I have finished 2/3 of the book, and nothing promised in the synopsis was still there. I thought this would be a book about sisterhood and finding and understanding your identity. I think everything that made me want to read this book would be squeezed in at the last 30-40 pages or so. Even if it does end up to be a really good part, I don’t think I can recommend this book at all. I think there are other similar books that can talk about these topics in a more direct and elegant way. This isn’t one of them. While I am tempted to not finish the book, I have read way too much of it to stop now.
