Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Tackles family secrets, toxic masculinity, and socio-economic differences with incisive clarity and candor. Camino Rios lives in the Dominican Republic and yearns to go to Columbia University in New York City, where her father works most of the year. Yahaira Rios, who lives in Morningside Heights, hasn’t spoken to her dad since the previous summer, when she found out he has another wife in the Dominican Republic. Their lives collide when this man, their dad, dies in an airplane crash with hundreds of other passengers heading to the island. Each protagonist grieves the tragic death of their larger-than-life father and tries to unravel the tangled web of lies he kept secret for almost 20 years. The author pays reverent tribute to the lives lost in a similar crash in 2001. The half sisters are vastly different—Yahaira is dark skinned, a chess champion who has a girlfriend; Camino is lighter skinned, a talented swimmer who helps her curandera aunt deliver neighborhood babies. Despite their differences, they slowly forge a tenuous bond. The book is told in alternating chapters with headings counting how many days have passed since the fateful event. Acevedo balances the two perspectives with ease, contrasting the girls’ environments and upbringings. Camino’s verses read like poetic prose, flowing and straightforward. Yahaira’s sections have more breaks and urgent, staccato beats. Every line is laced with betrayal and longing as the teens struggle with loving someone despite his imperfections. A standing ovation. (Verse novel. 14-18) Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Horn Book
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

In this sharp and compelling verse novel (a 2020 Boston Globe-Horn Book honoree), sixteen-year-old Camino Rios lives in the Dominican Republic and dreams of medical school. Sixteen-year-old Yahaira Rios is a native New Yorker who plays competitive chess. Although the two girls share a last name, they are strangers. But after flight 1112 from New York City to the Dominican Republic crashes with the man they each called Papi on board, Camino and Yahaira learn of each other's existence. In two distinct voices, Acevedo (The Poet X, rev. 3/18; With the Fire on High, rev. 5/19) explores the rich inner lives of the sudden half-sisters as they grapple with their complicated feelings about their father and the secrets he kept. Yahaira narrates in stirring non-rhyming couplets; Camino in intense three-line stanzas. Moving toward their inevitable meeting, Yahaira feels like "a spool of thread / that's been dropped to the ground...rolling undone / from the truth of this thing," while Camino wonders, "If I find her / would I find a breathing piece / of myself I had not known / was missing?" An author's note further explains the title of and inspiration for the novel, which was influenced by the tragic crash of flight AA587 out of New York that killed more than 260 people, most of them of Dominican descent, shortly after September 11, 2001. (c) Copyright 2021. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Tackles family secrets, toxic masculinity, and socio-economic differences with incisive clarity and candor. Camino Rios lives in the Dominican Republic and yearns to go to Columbia University in New York City, where her father works most of the year. Yahaira Rios, who lives in Morningside Heights, hasnt spoken to her dad since the previous summer, when she found out he has another wife in the Dominican Republic. Their lives collide when this man, their dad, dies in an airplane crash with hundreds of other passengers heading to the island. Each protagonist grieves the tragic death of their larger-than-life father and tries to unravel the tangled web of lies he kept secret for almost 20 years. The author pays reverent tribute to the lives lost in a similar crash in 2001. The half sisters are vastly differentYahaira is dark skinned, a chess champion who has a girlfriend; Camino is lighter skinned, a talented swimmer who helps her curandera aunt deliver neighborhood babies. Despite their differences, they slowly forge a tenuous bond. The book is told in alternating chapters with headings counting how many days have passed since the fateful event. Acevedo balances the two perspectives with ease, contrasting the girls environments and upbringings. Caminos verses read like poetic prose, flowing and straightforward. Yahairas sections have more breaks and urgent, staccato beats. Every line is laced with betrayal and longing as the teens struggle with loving someone despite his imperfections. A standing ovation. (Verse novel. 14-18) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.