Review: Pride

Pride by Ibi Zoboi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Another ARC I've picked up at work, another ARC review to make...and like a few of Becky Albertalli's books, I'm going to consider this one a 3.5 to be rounded up to a nice 4.

I admit, the phenomenal level of greatness to which Ibi Zoboi debuted in American Street made me extra-hyped for Pride. It's a slight case of Sophomore Slump to me, but that might be more a case of personal taste than anything else. American Street, after all, has more than a foot in the gateway of magical realism, while Pride has next to no genre-fic trappings whatsoever. And it being a remix of Pride and Prejudice, a book I admittedly don't like all that much, doesn't help.

But what Zoboi's two books have in common is a vibrant atmosphere rooted in Caribbean culture - in this book's case, largely Dominican. Spanish dialogue abounds, and you can practically smell the food and hear the music on the page. And then in come the gentrifiers, the Darcy family, building a huge mansion so they stick out like sore thumbs before they even arrive. Zuri, our leading lady, thinks she's got them all figured out. But she doesn't, and nor has she got her own friends and family quite figured out either. Everyone's got something to hide, some more so than others.

For sure, this is another Zoboi book I'll be happy to hand-sell at work. Now, when do we get that middle-grade one of hers I heard about? The one with the ice cream people? (Or am I wrong?)

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