It's rare when I love a book so much—to the point of designating it a 'favorite'—that I don't mark even one page with an underline or dog-ear. Perhaps the book, with its stellar cover art by Gustavo Rimada, was simply too beautiful to mark up. But more likely it's due to the fact that I was held so rapt by these short stories that I could not pause to underline; I had to get to the next gorgeous sentence. Even as I was halfway through, I knew I would be reading this collection again. I will say that page 33 is a little worn, and I didn't realize why until I saw that it held a sentence listing family members which I used as a key to the how the stories interlocked.

SABRINA & CORINA is a collection of short stories about indigenous Latinx women in Colorado. Fajardo-Anstine has crafted something quite singular in perspective and prose. The sense of place grounds the collection, while the cycles of violence and racism and fractured families repeatedly break the reader's heart. (That the cover features an anatomical heart makes sense.) I was trying to figure out which story was my favorite, but I can't discount a one. They're all tremendous works for how short they are; I feel as though I inhabited these characters for how intimately they're presented. The first story "Sugar Babies" certainly set the tone for the entire collection, and the final story "Ghost Sickness," left me in tears for its last line to the story and to the farewell of everything that preceeded it. That this is Fajardo-Anstine's debut is astounding; I'm awaiting her sophomore effort excitedly.