This is beautifully written and kind of gutting. Belen is clearly depressed and not doing anything to come out of it. Mostly because no one in her family talks about anything like mental health, although they are all reeling from the fallout of her father leaving them and not looking back - and taking all the money their mother saved to keep the family going. She is halfway through her senior year with no prospects for college or adulthood.
Belen's best friend Leti is an academic high flyer who is pregnant and at odds with her parents because they don't approve of her boyfriend due to their racism and hyper-religious attitude. Belen is trying to be there for Leti, but keeps getting pulled into her own sadness. She hooks up with a much older college boy in a series of scenes which are so painful and real that they might be too much for some readers. As someone who dated college boys in high school I can assure you that Ixta NAILS the amount of forgiveness that high school girls give their college "boyfriends." This is Ixta's debut novel and she was robbed of the Morris award, in my opinion. I can't wait to see what else she writes. She makes her setting of Oakland come alive and I hate settings and usually just skim over every description of place in books. And she makes Belen's trajectory feel victorious without pandering. This may be my favorite read of the year so far.
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