Awescape
I feel bad giving this a two star review but it was just not for me. I just didn't like the writing style. Pros are the writing was often funny and wove a lot of Mexican culture, and the visuals were often vivid. That said, the story felt like the author was making it up as he went and was so unrealistic in a way that felt toothless and unrealistic in a way that removed all stakes and drama.
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 who no one bothered to call and verify they agree to help or are even still alive? 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 naive high school age 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. It would NEVER happen. 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".
I feel bad giving this a two star review but it was just not for me. I just didn't like the writing style. Pros are the writing was often funny and wove a lot of Mexican culture, and the visuals were often vivid. That said, the story felt like the author was making it up as he went and was so unrealistic in a way that felt toothless and unrealistic in a way that removed all stakes and drama.
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 who no one bothered to call and verify they agree to help or are even still alive? 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 naive high school age 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. It would NEVER happen. 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".