RGG: Read alike for both The Outsiders, the narrator rings true to Pony Boy, and to House on Mango Street. Reading Interest: YA Very high school behaviors: sex, drugs, drinking, smoking.

This book is an interesting look at life as a hispanic-american in the late sixties. Very sad and eye opening. ( )

This book is an interesting look at life as a hispanic-american in the late sixties. Very sad and eye opening. ( )

It's the late 60s and Sammy and Juliana are in Hollywood - Hollywood, New Mexico that is. It's a time of change for both the country and Sammy and his friends. Saenz' biggest strength is his lovable, flawed characters (Gigi was my favorite, followed by Mrs. Apodaca). With drama and humor in great heaps, Saenz has crafted a believably harsh, yet hopeful world. ( )

Eh. My main beef with the book is that it is badly-written and predictable: characters are never introduced until it is time to get rid of them, no matter how central to Sammy's emotional life said character is allegedly claimed to be. And ALL characters who are not Sammy are gotten rid of.

Julianna is killed in the opening paragraphs, and from that point forward, everyone who Sammy cares about is either drafted, beaten up and sent away, or killed. In the later chapters, the author goes back and properly kills most of the characters who had escaped actually dying -- those who had been drafted or sent away. The scant handful who make it to the final chapter are killed off, one per sentence, in the final paragraph.

And did I say predictable? Oh, goodness, yes, predictable.

There's a lot of good stuff about this book -- it's a rich portrait of Las Crucas life circa 1967, for example -- but after a while, the ability to predict every plot "development" a chapter in advance saps at the book's foundations.