Alexandra Villasante

After escaping a detention center at the U.S. border, 17-year-old Marisol agrees to participate in a medical experiment hoping to keep her and her younger sister, Gabi, from being deported to El Salvador in this stunning and timely debut.

The Grief Keeper

Sarah Sammis

This stunning YA debut is a timely and heartfelt speculative narrative about healing, faith, and freedom. Seventeen-year-old Marisol has always dreamed of being American, learning what Americans and the US are like from television and Mrs. Rosen, an elderly expat who had employed Marisol's mother as a maid. When she pictured an American life for herself, she dreamed of a life like Aimee and Amber's, the title characters of her favorite American TV show. She never pictured fleeing her home in El Salvador under threat of death and stealing across the US border as "an illegal", but after her brother is murdered and her younger sister, Gabi's, life is also placed in equal jeopardy, she has no choice, especially because she knows everything is her fault. If she had never fallen for the charms of a beautiful girl named Liliana, Pablo might still be alive, her mother wouldn't be in hiding and she and Gabi wouldn't have been caught crossing the border. But they have been caught and their asylum request will most certainly be denied. With truly no options remaining, Marisol jumps at an unusual opportunity to stay in the United States. She's asked to become a grief keeper, taking the grief of another into her own body to save a life. It's a risky, experimental study, but if it means Marisol can keep her sister safe, she will risk anything. She just never imagined one of the risks would be falling in love, a love that may even be powerful enough to finally help her face her own crushing grief. The Grief Keeper is a tender tale that explores the heartbreak and consequences of when both love and human beings are branded illegal.

caroline wilson

I will never not recommend this book, everyone I meet in person will have ears talked off about how they need to read this book.

By the gods. 

Another one of my I-read-this-in-a-day, sobbing-loudly, im-queer-and-sad, favs.

The ways this book deals with mental illness, privilege, anger/numbness, immigration, and queerness, both comfortably queer and in places where queerness is feared and hated.

I would write a whole essay on this, but really all you need to know is to read it, cry some good healthy cries, hug your loved ones or strangers, maybe clean your space, and remember grief comes in many forms, and observe your grief. Deconstruct it, let yourself feel your grief, maybe get angry at it. Treat your grief like an angry cat, shoo it away when it gets somewhere it's not supposed to, let it sleep with you, across your chest. Grief is a human companion, and whether you feed it or not, it will always be there, so get comfortable with it, and grief does not have to be held alone.

spoiler section:


-Liliana: a seriously tragic character. I've met a Liliana- I've BEEN a Liliana. When growing up in a place of such hatred for who you are- for her El Salvador, for me deep southern Texas, it is so, so hard to be anything but disgusted with yourself, your actions. Even when you get to experience queerness so innocently and lovingly, like with Marisol, there is this, acidic, bile gurgling at the bottom of your heart, a hatred that has been shoved into your brain. You don't want it to be what it is, you don't want to be the "problem." So you shove your queerness away and you get so trapped in the shoving that you don't ever look at where your queerness, or who you've shoved, even falls.

-Pablo: I wanted to hate him. I wanted to hate him for the things he did to Gabi, to Marisol, to their mother, who waited in the kitchen and cried, but I can't. Not when you have a boy, just a kid, become a product of his environment, the people that help him keep the pain medication on the table for his mother. The imagery of the purple too was particularly painful to me, along with how Marisol experiences her half-grief for him. 

-Ray: particularly, the obvious as well as subtle show of her privilege throughout. One line that got me, made me full-body cringe and hide under my covers, was the line about how she never knew the maid's names. You have these people, come into your room every day, but you treat them like ghosts, like the shadows left behind after nuclear bombings, you see the impact and never see the person. Made me quite mad at her for a while I'm not gonna lie. Definitely with Marisol on the whole anger at that one.

-The Imagery: really I don't have much I can say because to put my feelings about this on paper would effectively be a key stash- but it was just beautiful. The personification of luck, the smell of lime, the whole trauma around "Manteca", just breathtaking.

-I'm conflicted on the ending, but I feel this is certainly just a me problem. It was just, so hopeful at the end, when Marisol gets that interview, getting to tell her own story, without the practiced lines of before. This really made me sad. Many people don't get that ending, don't get that second chance, don't get the coin flip. Very bittersweet, but this is a book, and sometimes, we get to see happy endings, and I think it really wanted, no, needed to see. To see this tragic character get the girl, and get that good, sweet, hopeful ending, was like sitting in the sun.  looking at you nonqueer mr. bury-your-gays-writers 

final notes:

read it, so help me god read it. then go hug someone, kiss someone, tell a stranger they are beautiful, make one of those "I love humanity" Tumblr posts, pet a cat, and let yourself grieve. For small things, for life-changing things, for everything in between. Because we must let our grief be held by others, just as we hold it.

Paige Green

Disclaimer: I received a finished copy from Penguin and ordered my own copy. Thanks! All opinions are my own.

Book Series: Standalone

Rating: 5/5

Publication Date: June 11, 2019

Genre: YA Horror

Recommended Age: 15+ (science experimentation, dystopian feelings, immigration, race issues, TW PTSD, depression)

Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers

Pages: 256

Amazon Link

Synopsis: Seventeen-year-old Marisol has always dreamed of being American, learning what Americans and the US are like from television and Mrs. Rosen, an elderly expat who had employed Marisol’s mother as a maid. When she pictured an American life for herself, she dreamed of a life like Aimee and Amber’s, the title characters of her favorite American TV show. She never pictured fleeing her home in El Salvador under threat of death and stealing across the US border as “an illegal”, but after her brother is murdered and her younger sister, Gabi’s, life is also placed in equal jeopardy, she has no choice, especially because she knows everything is her fault. If she had never fallen for the charms of a beautiful girl named Liliana, Pablo might still be alive, her mother wouldn’t be in hiding and she and Gabi wouldn’t have been caught crossing the border.

But they have been caught and their asylum request will most certainly be denied. With truly no options remaining, Marisol jumps at an unusual opportunity to stay in the United States. She’s asked to become a grief keeper, taking the grief of another into her own body to save a life. It’s a risky, experimental study, but if it means Marisol can keep her sister safe, she will risk anything. She just never imagined one of the risks would be falling in love, a love that may even be powerful enough to finally help her face her own crushing grief.

The Grief Keeper is a tender tale that explores the heartbreak and consequences of when both love and human beings are branded illegal.

Review: Holy crap guys this was AMAZING. I loved the dystopian/sci-fi esque feel of this book and I loved seeing Marisol develop. The science seems so real in this book it’s scary! The world building was amazing, I loved the queer romance in this book, and I loved the writing. It was absolutely amazing!

My only issue is that the pacing was a bit slow in places but other than that I absolutely guarantee this book.

Verdict: This could happen one day and it frightens me.

The Grief Keeper

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