Something Inbetween

Magical, inspirational and captivating are three words to describe this book. Always been a fan of De La Cruz since first reading blue bloods, but this was fantastic. I was completely taken away by the topic and the strength portrayed in the protagonist. Top marks for that! But most of all, this book sends forward a message that everyone should be doing, that we can do anything if we just try hard enough. Jasmines support system in the book was phenomenal and should anyone suffer the way she did, they should know that they too have a support system in the form of friends, teachers and family.

Very well done Melissa!

This is a book about a teenage girl who finds out her family are illegal immigrants. It's so much more than that though. This book is about immigration, it's about identity, it's about education and ambition and privilege. There are so many themes in this book I'm still thinking about it days later. It's a tense book because there are real people in this situation who don't have an author to try to help them out. Ultimately it is an uplifting book about family and community and friendship, all wrapped up neatly in a bow of teen romance. Read it. It will open your eyes.

So there’s this internet meme that was doing the rounds a little while ago, just after the Brexit vote. It went something along the lines of, ‘Britain and America are currently locked in a battle to see who can screw their country up the most. Britain is in the lead at the moment, but don’t worry: America has a Trump card’.

Yeah ... Neither country is doing great at the moment. Hopefully it will just turn out to be a blip, but in case it isn’t books like Melissa de la Cruz’s Something In Between shine a very important light on some of the unsavoury arguments that are being thrown up about immigration .

This was a really sweet book about a type-A overachiever called Jasmine, the daughter of Filipino immigrants. Jasmine’s star is in the ascendant. She’s a straight A student, National Scholar (had to Google what that was) and captain of the cheerleading squad. She barely remembers the Philippines and America is her home. Only when she goes to accept her hard-won scholarship, the truth comes out: she and her family are undocumented (illegal) - their visas ran out years ago and her parents have been trying to figure out a way to keep them all in America whilst trying to avoid getting themselves deported.

There were lots of things I liked about this book, not least the fact it dealt with the Filipino community, a group of people that don’t crop up too often in literature. I liked the fact that the book deals with a contentious subject like undocumented immigration with grace and compassion and the portrayal of Jasmine and her family and the different ways they try to deal with their predicament.

There’s also a romance storyline going on alongside the issue of Jasmine’s legal status - that between Jasmine and Royce, the son of a super conservative congressman. Royce is pretty dreamy and I really liked that he wasn’t just posho rich kid - he had problems of his own. Throughout the book, Jasmine and Royce try a number of different ways to get her and her family documented and I did read through quite a bit of the book thinking, ‘They’re totally going to get married’. I won’t say whether they do or not, but suffice to say that the ending is a happy one.

At times I felt that the will-they-won’t-they aspect of the romance overshadowed what was, for me, the real point of the book, which was how Jasmine dealt with the legal and emotional ramifications around the change in her immigration status. The romance was super cute, though, so I kind of forgave them.

All in all this was a sweet book and I’d definitely recommend it. Especially for Americans. Especially before November the 8th.

4 stars