Awescape
I feel bad giving this a two star review because it's not a badly written book. The book is about a small Mexican town where all the men have gone north to the USA for work, leaving the women behind. Concerned about the lack of protection from bandits and weirdos coming to bother them, a young group of girls travel across the border to bring their family or at least "soldiers" back to protect their town. The prose was funny although in a way that didn't always click with me, and wove a lot of Mexican culture and turns of phrase into the book which was cool, and the pictures of life in their hometown were vivid. That said, the story felt like there wasn't much to it- all the plot points were fantastical and unrealistic in a way that removed all stakes and drama because it was so patently unrealistic. The towns elders and grown women sends a group of teenage girls in a dangerous area alone across the country and across the border? With no contacts to help them except a phone number from decade ago to someone who used to live in Tijuana who no one has talked to in decades or bothered to call and verify they are still there and willing to help the girls before they send them, risking their lives? This book was written by a man and I understand its a bit of a fairy tale but it just felt like stupid things happened to make the plot work. Living as a woman, the idea of young girls being sent to represent their town with no worldly knowledge and hardly any resources where they could be disappeared, sex trafficked, raped, or worse, is just so ridiculous. They would send some older men or at least the old women. It would NEVER happen, and the book refuses to acknowledge who serious the stakes are- the girls seem very unaware how much danger they're in or have any plan which I understand teenagers are dumb but I doubt most are this clueless. At times there are creeps or bad people, but then it's undercut by good luck, jokes, or an almost cartoony turn of events. At one point a character pole vaults over the border. A kind border guard decides to drive them across after they get caught and returned. And then the major plot resolution, if they manage to bring people back to protect he town, isn't even shown- the last couple pages is they make it across the border and then a quick scene of them coming back to town with an "army". So how did they find these "soldiers", how did they get back across, how did they establish order? Wasn't for me.
I feel bad giving this a two star review because it's not a badly written book. The book is about a small Mexican town where all the men have gone north to the USA for work, leaving the women behind. Concerned about the lack of protection from bandits and weirdos coming to bother them, a young group of girls travel across the border to bring their family or at least "soldiers" back to protect their town. The prose was funny although in a way that didn't always click with me, and wove a lot of Mexican culture and turns of phrase into the book which was cool, and the pictures of life in their hometown were vivid. That said, the story felt like there wasn't much to it- all the plot points were fantastical and unrealistic in a way that removed all stakes and drama because it was so patently unrealistic. The towns elders and grown women sends a group of teenage girls in a dangerous area alone across the country and across the border? With no contacts to help them except a phone number from decade ago to someone who used to live in Tijuana who no one has talked to in decades or bothered to call and verify they are still there and willing to help the girls before they send them, risking their lives? This book was written by a man and I understand its a bit of a fairy tale but it just felt like stupid things happened to make the plot work. Living as a woman, the idea of young girls being sent to represent their town with no worldly knowledge and hardly any resources where they could be disappeared, sex trafficked, raped, or worse, is just so ridiculous. They would send some older men or at least the old women. It would NEVER happen, and the book refuses to acknowledge who serious the stakes are- the girls seem very unaware how much danger they're in or have any plan which I understand teenagers are dumb but I doubt most are this clueless. At times there are creeps or bad people, but then it's undercut by good luck, jokes, or an almost cartoony turn of events. At one point a character pole vaults over the border. A kind border guard decides to drive them across after they get caught and returned. And then the major plot resolution, if they manage to bring people back to protect he town, isn't even shown- the last couple pages is they make it across the border and then a quick scene of them coming back to town with an "army". So how did they find these "soldiers", how did they get back across, how did they establish order? Wasn't for me.