Thank you to Little, Brown BFYR (via NetGalley) for the ARC!

I had high hopes for this book after reading Kemp's debut, Somewhere Between Bitter and Sweet (one of my favorite books of 2021), and I was not disappointed!

I can usually tell I'm going to give a book 5 stars if it makes me cry, and I spent probably the last third of this one with tears in my eyes 🥲 I loved both Raúl and Danna, and their stories, separate and together, were the perfect blend of sad and sweet. Both of them were dealing with losing a family member (albeit in different ways), and both of them had very complicated relationships with their mothers. They bonded over that very quickly and out of it came a very sweet romance.

I also loved Danna's relationship with food, and by extension, her relationship with her grandfather. It was something she and her grandfather always had in common. Despite her mother's shaming comments about Danna's eating habits and body, Danna doesn't let that diminish her enjoyment of eating and baking. Over the course of the book Danna learns to love her body as it is and for what it does for her instead of what her mother wants it to be, which I think is a powerful and important message.

One thing I really liked and want to mention specifically is what both Danna and Raúl's school experiences were like. They don't spend a lot of time at school in the book, but I thought it was very interesting how Kemp wrote their experiences. Both Danna and Raúl have a LOT going on in their personal lives that, obviously, have an effect on their school life. Danna gets detention, which is led by a teacher who sleeps through the whole thing. But she knows more about the students in there (and WHY they're there) than the teachers do--after-school jobs, things going on at home, etc. She makes the small gesture of giving homemade treats to all the kids in detention with her to show that someone cares about them, even if it seems like none of the adults in their lives do.

And Raúl starts having trouble at school when his mother returns home because her nightmares wake him up at night. There is a stark difference in how his teachers treat him when he falls asleep in class; one treats him as a lazy kid who doesn't care, while another notices that this behavior isn't normal for Raúl and decides to (subtly) check in with him. I thought these parts were really interesting and important to include because I know, as someone who worked with kids for years, that this is SO ACCURATE. Kids deal with so much outside of school that their teachers may never know about, and school is not always the most important thing. Most of the time they just need empathy or someone to listen. If a kid is falling asleep in class, there's probably a reason, especially if it's not something that they usually do. I just really appreciated the inclusion of these scenes because it is a reality for so many kids, and a moment of kindness from a teacher can really go a long way.

Overall, I really loved this book. Which you can probably tell by the rambly review 😅 If you're a fan of novels in verse, or if you liked Kemp's debut, or even if you just like contemporary YA, please check this one out