MarginMan

I received a promotional copy of this book through the First Reads program.

As a previous reviewer mentioned, Gautier's writing is smooth. She has the necessary skills. Unfortunately, her decisions often fell flat with me - the plots she chose to pursue, the character traits she chose to ascribe, etc.

It's at least as much about family problems as it is about bicultural issues. While this might make the characters more relatable in a way, it also makes them less interesting. There's a certain amount of redundancy, with story after story being about family problems. More variety would have helped. Often, it didn't even matter that they were Puerto Rican. That would have been fine, except I signed up to read a book about Puerto Ricans.

The first story, "Aguanile", is easily my favorite in the collection. "Now We Will Be Happy", "How To Make Flan", and "The Last Hurricane" are also decent stories.