Name: I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter
Rating: 3.835051546391753 (97 reviews)
ISBN: 9781524700485

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter

If the middle part of the book had been edited out i really think i would have cried and found it overall beautiful but the first half felt a forced cliche but the second half - wow, sanchez’s writing and Julia’s voice are stronger than ever *anyway everything is subjective at the end of the day 🥹

Noemi Gonzalez

Eva Ströberg

This book touched very deep inside me. I’m not Mexican but growing up with the same kind of overbearing mother and a taciturn father.

I can relate with almost everything that is in the book, me being the rebel, me wanting to get away from the family and the town we lived in and everything else. So the book became personal to me.

This book taught me also that there’s a back story that we don’t always know, as we could never fully know or understand someone that we thought we know.

Amelia C 

My first YA book! This book had me feeling so
Nostalgic and melancholy. I felt sad, and inspired by Julia’s resilience and also her intense feelings of hopelessness and anxiety. Yes she came off as antagonistic and prickly but she’s a teenager so par for the course. A portrait of family- each member with their own pain and crushing secrets. And a reminder of how important it is to pay attention to, take care of our mental health. Great read!

HelyaSameni

I felt good reading the book but was waiting for a more captivating ending. Maybe a moment of understanding for Julia or her mom, maybe a profound conversation. Anyways, reading the book made me feel good and relaxed.

Stephanie Ridiculous

Pros:
-highlights MH struggles among teens, and especially among Latina teens
-grapples with some heavy topics that teens are often trying to navigate on their own
-has some MH resources listed in the back
-touches on these things without ever being graphic

Cons:
-Nothing really happens for the first ~65% of the book
-I wish Julia had made the connection between how much the lying of her family members negatively impacted her and how much her own lying was negatively impacting others

Andrea

— I think it does send a great message but maybe things could have been handled better. Maybe in a less extreme way, though I think it was made extreme on purpose precisely to send the message but I don’t know.

— I think it’s shows perfectly how awful it is to have to live up to your parents’ expectations, specially when you have a relative that may come out as “perfect” and you have to compete with that image, feeling like you’re not enough.

— Istg Julia is one of the most annoying characters I’ve ever read. I’m not talking about her mommy and daddy issues (because that’s completely understandable) but that she’s kind of obnoxious and extremely confrontational.

— At first the whole family dynamic was relatable, but then the parents (specially the mom) started to become really annoying, to the point where it kind of became unbelievable that a parent could be like that. Though I don’t discard it because you never know.

— I won’t talk about the mexican representation because I’m not mexican neither a USA immigrant. But I will say that the depiction of the whole latinx culture stereotypical, like it portrays all the bad stuff. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen but Latin-America is more than gangs, shootings, poverty and insecurity.

— It had so much inner monologue to the point where it became boring. Plus, I’m not even a big fan of contemporary books that are not romance, but this one hooked me with the whole Olga mystery.

Jeff Brown 

I did have to take a look at other reviews to make sure I wasn’t too hard on the main character. Wow, a lot of people disliked her!

I thought early and later, Julia was hilarious, despite her sister having just died. In the middle, when it seemed Julia was moving on, she became annoying. But as she was moving towards acceptance, life became real to her and eventually led her to a direction of growth.

Enjoyable yet painful in periods, a strong book that any teen, especially one connected to another country, should read.

Nadine 

YA suitable for HS level. 
Very well written teen novel with a strong authentic diverse voice. I can see parents baulking at this as it covers all their worst fears for their children: partying, casual drug use, sex, affairs with an older married person, illegal migration and suicide.
But it is a powerful book talking about How and why generations don’t and can’t talk to each other and the high costs of silence, assumptions and generalised fear.

Corey White

I wasn’t overly interested in this book for the first, maybe 1/4th of it, I found Julia, the main character, to be hard to like, and the narration of her days and thoughts a little rough. But something kept me in the book, and as it went along I found myself appreciating the story as a whole, and eventually even Julia grew on me. 
The sorry gave me a heavy dose of humbling perspective, and for that I am grateful.

Paige Green

Rating: 4.5/5



Genre: YA Contemporary



Recommended Age: 14+ (some sexual content, confrontational scenes, depression and anxiety, death)



Pages: 340



Author Website



Amazon Link


Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from KidLitExchange and the publishing company. All opinions are my own.



Synopsis: Perfect Mexican daughters do not go away to college. And they do not move out of their parents’ house after high school graduation. Perfect Mexican daughters never abandon their family.
 
But Julia is not your perfect Mexican daughter. That was Olga’s role. 
 
Then a tragic accident on the busiest street in Chicago leaves Olga dead and Julia left behind to reassemble the shattered pieces of her family. And no one seems to acknowledge that Julia is broken, too. Instead, her mother seems to channel her grief into pointing out every possible way Julia has failed.
 
But it’s not long before Julia discovers that Olga might not have been as perfect as everyone thought. With the help of her best friend Lorena, and her first kiss, first love, first everything boyfriend Connor, Julia is determined to find out. Was Olga really what she seemed? Or was there more to her sister’s story? And either way, how can Julia even attempt to live up to a seemingly impossible ideal?



I thought this book was really touching and sweet, which would make it a perfect book to cry to. And honestly I did. I thought this book was amazingly well done. I loved the way the story was written with Spanish and English, some explained and some not. I loved the writing and how well the story flowed. The pacing and the plot was well done and the world building was as well. I also felt I learned a lot about the Mexican culture and I feel smarter for reading this book.



However, I do feel that the main character was way too confrontational. Although I could see where it works well for her character, it just made me not connect with her as much. I also had an issue with understanding why education was less important than family. I mean I can assume things, but I don’t want to. If any Mexican readers here could explain this to me I’d love to know why.



Verdict: Other than a couple of issues on my part, I feel this book was amazing and a book you should read if you’re looking for a diverse book on Mexican culture.

Jeni Enjaian

I wanted so much to love this book. All last year, I kept seeing so many of my female Mexican students check this book out from the library and read voraciously. (I teach in a school with a majority Hispanic population.) I constantly search for books that appeal to their culture and life experiences and thought this would be one that I would whole-heartedly recommend.
I loved Julia. In fact, I saw one of my students mirrored, almost perfectly, in her. However, the constant swearing kept jolting me out of the narrative. I could never truly engage in the novel. I understand that language like this is an everyday thing in the vocabulary of my students. (I hear it quite frequently from them.) However, the crass nature of Julia's language detracted from her character's ardent desire to become a writer, from her frequent consumption of classic novels. The two things were incongruent and I, as a reader, struggled to reconcile them.
I also wanted to know more about Olga. After all, her death, referenced in the opening page, is what inspires the title and supposedly a lot of Julia's own actions.
I really wish I could recommend this book. Like I said to start, I really wanted to like this book but I just could not.

Leelynn Brady

Find this review and more on my blog Sometimes Leelynn Reads.


  “How do we tie our shoes, brush our hair, drink coffee, wash the dishes, and go to sleep, pretending everything is fine? How do we laugh and feel happiness despite the buried things growing inside? How can we do that day after day?” 


I've been doing a bad job at letting my readers know which books should have trigger warnings, so I'm going to do one for this book: please be warned that this book has death, and attempted suicide.

This book starts off with the aftermath of Julia's sister Olga's death. It wasn't a pretty death either, and the entire Reyes family is still feeling the effects of what happened. None of Olga's family was with her when she died, and I think it's safe to say that she died instantly, so there was no chance to save her. Either way, the Reyes family lost their eldest daughter, and there's just no healing from it.

See, Olga was the perfect Mexican daughter, according to Julia. Olga stayed at home to be with her parents, went to a community college close to their home in Chicago, cooked and cleaned almost as well as their mother, and was just pretty much better in every single way. According to Julia, anyway. Julia is anything but perfect and is nothing like her older sister. Julia is rude (or at least very, very blunt and can come off as rude), wants to go to college in New York, and can't cook or clean to save her life. So when Olga dies and her mother starts being even harder on Julia than before, it just seems to come crashing down around her.


  “I don’t know why I’ve always been like this, why the smallest things make me ache inside. There’s a poem I read once, titled “The World Is Too Much with Us,” and I guess that is the best way to describe the feeling—the world is too much with me.”


This book is about death and learning how to deal with death. This book shows that time does not always heal all wounds and that sometimes the death of a family member - one that hid secrets up until the day she died - is too difficult to deal with alone. Not only did this book resonate with me because of Julia's actions later on in the book, but also the Mexican culture that we got to witness throughout this book. I can really see how my Chamorro and Spanish culture is similar to the Mexican culture. I could see my grandma in Julia's grandma, and my Chamorro family in her Mexican family.

I definitely recommend this one.

Kourtney

I went into this book very intrigued - a sister who dies with a secret past from a culture that is not my own? I couldn't wait to start it...only...the mysterious past was brought up, and then forgotten about. Oh it would be brought up every now and again as a throwaway comment. Like a "oh yeah I need to do something to figure it out, but instead let me do this." The premise of the book had nothing to do with her sister's mysterious past, but rather how she grieved, and struggled with her parents, her culture, and her future. Had this been listed in the summary more prominently, I would not have been vastly disappointed.

Abigail F

Quick review:
Lovely multicultural novel with insights into Mexican culture (most of which my friends went on to discuss for hours). The story of girl trying to find her place in a culture she doesn't feel she fits into, especially when she is following the footsteps of her recently passed, perfect older sister. With themes such as loss, depression, love, and family, this book sometimes feels like it is trying to fit too much in at once. My biggest critique is that it started feeling like a mystery novel, then romance, then mental health commentary, then back to mystery-romance. Overall well written.

Katie

Overall I wasn't really into this book but there were some good parts to it. For example,

  His name is Juan García, but he goes by Juanga, which is the nickname of Juan Gabriel, Mexico's most beloved singer . . . How can he compare himself to him? . . . So of course I hate him immediately.

As well as this on the same page,

  Our sub, Mr. Blankenship, breathes loudly through his mouth and wears a pilling green sweater two sizes too small. I can see his hairy belly when he lifts his arms. I don't know where the hell they find these people.

Those were just amazing, and remind me of comments my sister would legitimately make towards other people. But while Julia's snarky attitude got a laugh out of me at parts, at other parts, it was a bit much. I also felt a lot of language in the book was really sexist (even though Julia is self-proclaimed against sexism). Early on in the book, Julia comes across her sister's underwear, which she constantly refers to as "skanky." She gets a bit less slut-shamey as the book goes on, and does openly chastise a man when he calls a woman a "hooker," but she never reflects on her own attitude and behaviors.

There were also two lines in the book that were just so unnecessary... in the first chapter, where she refers to a literal clown as "looking like a r*pist" and in Chapter 18, when she wants to emphasize how much people are shocked at her comeback to school and says, "People keep staring at me like I'm a quadriplegic or something." (Did nobody realize this is super ableist????)

Juanga and Lorena were both pretty interesting characters and I would be open to reading a spin-off just based on them. Connor, Julia's main love interest, was so insta-lovey and he was about as deep as a boiled potato. (I'm not even sure if I've got his name right to be honest, also stealing the boiled potato line from the book as well)

It's an important book which will resonate with a lot of people, but unfortunately, not for me.

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter

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