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Book: With the Fire on High

Author: Elizabeth Acevedo

Book Series: Standalone

Rating: 5/5

Diversity: LGBT side characters, Black and Lantinx characters and MC (Puerto Rican and Black)

Recommended For...: ya contemporary, cooking, teen parenting

Publication Date: May 17, 2019

Genre: YA Contemporary

Recommended Age: 16+ (language, sexual content and sex discussed)

Publisher: Quill Tree Books

Pages: 400

Synopsis: With her daughter to care for and her abuela to help support, high school senior Emoni Santiago has to make the tough decisions, and do what must be done. The one place she can let her responsibilities go is in the kitchen, where she adds a little something magical to everything she cooks, turning her food into straight-up goodness. Still, she knows she doesn’t have enough time for her school’s new culinary arts class, doesn’t have the money for the class’s trip to Spain — and shouldn’t still be dreaming of someday working in a real kitchen. But even with all the rules she has for her life — and all the rules everyone expects her to play by — once Emoni starts cooking, her only real choice is to let her talent break free.

Review: Oh my goodness, this book was absolutely amazing. I loved the voice of this book and I flew through it. The character development was amazing, the romance cute, and the world building amazing. Absolutely recommend!

However, I did think that the book had an overarching problem where there was a lot of story but not a lot of plot. The overarching plot seems to be "girl needs to get into culinary arts program" but it's more like "girl has problem" *solved* "girl has new problem" *solved* etc. It's not bad per se, it's really good, but it's more like a tv show with different but connecting problems in one book/series.

Verdict: It was so well done and I’ll definitely reread it!