I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter/ Erika Sanchez/ 344 pgs

Young Adult is not something I routinely read but every now and then one catches my eye, as this one did. The book focuses on Julia Reyes' last two years of high school in Chicago. Julia has all of the teenaged angst you'd expect but her stress is multiplied because her older sister dies at the beginning of the story, her parents are immigrants from Mexico, and her family is poor. While I can see why Julia drove her mother nuts with her behavior, I could definitely sympathize with Julia too. She's smart, she wants to go to college, she wants to be a writer. None of these are things her mother understands, plus her mother has her own worries. This is a vivid story about one young girl trying break outside of herself and make her own way. The blurb hints at a mystery and there is one, but it's only given sporadic attention and is not the focus of the book.

The Boston Girl / Anita Diamant / 320 pgs

This is the book that my club will be reading in May. After quite a few duds, this one was really good. I had hoped the story would stretch out across the main character's whole life rather than ending in the 30's, but I still really liked it. Addie Baum is the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants. She is born in Boston in 1900, but her much older sisters (10 and 12 years older respectively) remember their homeland, each adapting in different ways to America. The story takes place over about 20 years, from around age 15 to 35, and is a great coming-of-age story. The story alternates from heartwarming to heartbreaking as Addie deals with unsupportive, Old World parents, World War I, the flu epidemic of 1918-1919, and misogyny in the work place. I definitely recommend reading it, especially if you like historical fiction and stories about immigrants.

Unforgotten Coat / Frank Cottrell Boyce 42 p.

Sarah Coomes narrates with story of two boys, immigrants from Mongolia. Julie becomes their "good guide" through the soccer, British slang, school dress-down days. The brothers are fleeing a demon who makes you vanish. They takes different ways home every night. They have piqued her interest in Mongolia, so she studies up. Though Julie tries to learn where they live, she fails until her mother helps when Julie needs to return a coat. A very telling happening occurs when Julie cannot get anyone to answer the door. Finally after pounding and pounding, a brother appears to take the coat. Julie sees fear in everyone's face. Poignantly, one brother calls to say goodbye when the authorites find them and send them back to Mongolia.