A Variety of Realistic Fiction

April is PACKED with titles! I know that people have opined that I should only post one book a day, but since I have so many titles, I will do slightly shorter reviews! 

Mancilla, Monica. Sing it Like Celia
April 2, 2024 by Penguin Workshop

E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus

Salva Sanchez' parents divorced when she was very young, and it's been just her and her mother, who is a nurse. When her mother doesn't come home, she ends up calling her father, who picks her up, won't tell her what happened, and take her to a trailer park where they are staying while he investigates a case of a woman being deported. He's an investigative journalist and moves around quite a bit. Salva is understandably upset by everything, but soon settles in to a new life at the Lonely Pines campground, run by the very  nice Betty. Not so nice is her granddaughter, Darcy, who has a singing group called "The Darcy Experience". When Salva meets the members, she likes being with them, and they have her sing with them. She prefers a salsa style similar to famous singer Celia Cruz, which Darcy says very mean things about. To help the woman her father is investigating, the kids plan a benefit concert, and Salva learns some hard truths about her mother. 

This is a good choice for readers who enjoyed Siddiqui's, Barakah Beats, Pla's The Fire, The Water, and Maudie McGinn, or Winston's Braid Girls, since there is a similar feel of young people making friends and banding together for good causes.  
 

Miller, Kalena. South of Somewhere
April 4, 2024 by Albert Whitman & Company
E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus

Mavis has a very nice life. Her family, included retired French professor Mike, wealth manager Julie, and older siblings Camille and Andre, live in a very nice Chicago neighborhood. When they return from a fancy vacation on Maui, they find police officers swarming around their home. It turns out that there mother, who took another car home from the airport, is wanted for embezzlement. With no money and no options, the family take off to a small town where Mike's sister Melissa lives. The two are estranged over an incident concerning Julie, but Melissa takes them in to live in her basement while they sort things out. Mavis watches Lily, her young cousin, and does a good job at it. Melissa even pays her, which leads Maivs to contact neighbor Emma to set up a babysitting business to earn money. The two not only start a successful business, but investigate the mysterious postcards from Mavis' mother that seem to have coded messages. The family struggles to find employment, and Mavis tries to locate her mother. But even if she does, will she get the closure she needs. 

This is a good choice for readers who liked the details of dealing with a parent who has committed a white collar crime like Sheinmel's 2011 All The Things You Are and Morrison's 2022 Coming Up Short, mixed with some of the excitement of Galante's 2017 Stealing Our Way Home. 

Oakes, Colleen. The Second Favorite Daughters Club 1: Sister Sabotage
April 2, 2024 by Pixel+Ink
E ARC Provided by Netgalley

Santana has a problem with her sister Victoria; all of the family's attention is directed to the older girls' ballet career. Casey also has a problem with hers; young Sage and her father are two peas in a pod, and Casey feels excluded ever since her mother abandoned the family. The girls meet at school and bond over their sibling woes. The decide to create a Second Favorite Daughters club and even have meetings in a treehouse, since neither have a cell phone. When Cai, a cute boy in Santana's class, asks her to set him up with Victoria, Santana declares an all out war. Both girls put plans into place to make their sisters look bad, and make them look like model children. This includes wreaking havoc with Victoria's schedule by reprogramming phones and blaming Sage when Casey purposefully kills all of her father's plants. When Santana tells Cai about this plan, which she promised she would keep secret, Casey is angry. Of course, Victoria eventually finds out. After Casey's mother visits for a while but then leaves because she just can't handle being with them, Casey is angry and done with her mother, but this leads her to be more understanding of her father. Santana, on the other hand, runs away to New York City. Will the girls ever be able to figure out their place in their families? 

This is a good choice for readers who like to investigate family dynamics with books like Willis' Smaller Sister, Howland's Forget-Me-Not Summer, or Palmer's Love You Like a Sister or who really like the mean spiritedness of Andelfinger's graphic novel adaptations of Pascal's Sweet Valley Twins books or Harrison's The Clique.