I read The Poet X and fell head over heels. I had never encountered anything like it and it deserved every single award it won. This is not The Poet X. In The Poet X Acevedo gave her readership a novel in poetry form with little sprinkles of prose to bring it all together. The restriction of the poet form meant that she couldn't fall into the trap of YA over-explaining and thus simplifying the complexities of the protagonist's emotions. In With the Fire on High did fall into a few YA traps, including the ever frustrating trope of a protagonist who doesn't know how to breathe (I encountered three instances of letting go of a breath the protagonist didn't know she was holding).⁠
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However, this is still a great YA novel. Acevedo doesn't shy away from the challenges of being a teen mother and the constant struggle Emoni has with trying to make her Abuela proud while seeing evidence of how she has disappointed her every day. Evidence which she loves and wouldn't take back despite the increased difficulty her daughter brings to her life. It's a novel with a cast of strong, multi-dimensional female characters that are both for the protagonist (her teacher, her Abuela, Emoni herself) and against her (her baby daddy's mother, Pretty Leslie). However, the men in the story are not villainized or torn down. Yes, there are snarky remarks, such as the quote I pulled, but Emoni's father and the father of her child are flawed but not evil.⁠
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I always judge YA books by what I think 16-year-old me would have thought and I think 16-year-old me would have enjoyed this one a lot. We have friendship, a love interest, and a complex main character who is talented and ambitious and conflicted. This would have been a great book for 16-year-old me. Heck, 30-year-old me thought it was pretty great too.⁠