Clap When You Land by Elizabeth AcevedoMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Trigger warnings for this book: parental death, stalking, sexual assault.
Elizabeth Acevedo returns to the novel-in-verse style that helped her debut so amazingly in The Poet X and once again brings us a literary experience unlike any other. This time, she splits the book between the POVs of two Dominican girls - Yahaira, living in NYC, and Camino, living on the island - and how their lives unexpectedly intertwine in the wake of a DR-bound plane crashing after leaving New York.
I'm a little bit torn on whether or not I should discuss the girls' connections in too much detail - while the book's blurb is fairly cagey about it, it's pretty easy to figure out, especially if you read In the Time of the Butterflies as many times as I did. There was one little detail in that book in particular, one scene, that helped me really guess the big twist of this one early. But as easy as that guess was, it did nothing to detract from the experience of Acevedo's latest - intensely emotional, fast-paced and punchy with its verse writing that helped me read through the whole book in one sitting. And of course, how even with that connection between them, Camino and Yahaira still have certain walls between them that are difficult to pull down. Cultural walls between a girl who's been privileged to experience life in America, and a girl who fears her chance at immigration may well be gone.
But it wouldn't be an Acevedo book if you didn't care about these girls with all your heart, that's for damn sure.
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