My response to the novel so far...

I am having a hard time with this novel. Soto has a stilted style of writing. I think he is writing this way to sound like an adolescent, but instead it makes Marisa sound unintelligent. "Marisa could tell that the nerd wasn't familiar with her kind of school, one with security guards who themselves looked like thugs."I have read many young adult novels where the writers create an adolescent voice without making the main character sound silly.

I also find myself getting confused about some of the decisions that Marisa makes. So, she meets Rene and the next day she wants to go to a new school. Marisa is relieved that she doesn't have to go to her old school, and yet she never thought about going to a new school prior to meeting Rene. Given that she makes this decision after meeting Rene you can infer that she has made this decision entirely based on him, however, she thinks about how much she hated her old school all of the time. So, why didn't she try to transfer earlier?

The last difficulty that I have is that there are quite a few stereotypes in this novel. First there is the nerd with the high water pants and fanny pack (which seems like an anachronism when you figure that this novel cannot be set in the 80's or the early 90's because of the prevalent use of cellphones which were pretty expensive then). Next we have the poor school entirely populated by thugs and gangsters where the minority student body is only good at one thing: sports. Then you have the rich school where everyone is nice, involved in clubs, and of course horrible at sports. Then there is the school production of Romeo and Juliet. Last but not least we have a heavy girl who suffers from low self esteem who will become magically fabulous through the miracle that is a diet.

I think that middle school students would read this book, but I am not sure that they would find Marisa to be authentic.