Loved this! Great for fans of John Green, A.S. King, Rainbow Rowell, or anyone who likes realistic fiction with plenty of wit, intelligent and snappy characters, and lots of references to delicious tacos. ( )

I read this book because a review of it was "in progress" during Banned Books Week 2022 in my racist, radical right-wing rural Republican school district, that had already banned Out of Darkness by another Latina author, for "sexually explicit content." I remember ordering Gabi, A Girl in Pieces in e-book format for my state university library's curriculum collection (used by future teachers) because it won the 2015 William C. Morris Award for Debut Young Adult Fiction.

Gabriela "Gabi" Hernandez is a slightly-chubby Mexican-American high school senior in southern California. The book is her diary/journal, and covers a 10.5 month period from a month before senior year starts, through graduation.
The book opens with Gabi dealing with one best friend (Cindy) who's just found out she's unintentionally pregnant, and another best friend (Sebastian) who is gay and, after coming out to his parents, is kicked out of his home by his father. Gabi has family problems too. Her father is a meth addict, her 16-year-old brother gets arrested for tagging, her hypocritical ultra-religious aunt lives with the family, and her overbearing mother is also pregnant. Throw in date rape, another classmate getting an abortion, teens contemplating sex (and condoms), and dating dilemmas, and you've got plenty here to rile the "Christian" nationalists.

This book reminded me SO much of my own high school journal and letters to my pen pal (Gabi writes letters she never sends, to her dad and others). Similar angst - I'm too fat, does that boy like me, fretting about academics, and so on. Like Gabi, I found solace in my writing (like her, some poetry too), and I think the journal format creates an honesty that many readers will be able to relate to.

So what happened with this book in my local school libraries? Apparently, this book made it through the challenge process (although why it did and Out of Darkness did not is beyond me). As of this writing, the book is still on the shelves and available in the high school library. I borrowed the copy I read from the local public library's young adult section. After I return it, it will be interesting to see if it stays there or, like Out of Darkness, gets moved to the adult section. ( )

Originally posted at https://reallifereading.com/2017/01/04/gabi-a-girl-in-pieces/


The first book I finished, though officially I started it on the last day of 2016, was quite a read. It was a book I didn’t quite know that I needed to read, until I read it. Don’t you just love when that happens?

I like how it opens, and how in this first journal entry that we read, Quintero sets the scene for the book.



"July 24
My mother named me Gabriela, after my grandmother who, coincidentally, didn’t want to meet me when I was born because my mother was unmarried, and therefore living in sin. My mom has told me the story many, many, MANY, times of how, when she confessed to my grandmother that she was pregnant with me, her mother beat her. BEAT HER! She was twenty-five. That story is the basis of my sexual education and has reiterated why it’s important to wait until you’re married to give it up. So now, every time I go out with a guy, my mom says, “Ojos abiertos, piernas cerradas.” Eyes open, legs closed. That’s as far as the birds and the bees talk has gone. And I don’t mind it. I don’t necessarily agree with that whole wait until you’re married crap, though. I mean, this is America and the 21st century; not Mexico one hundred years ago. But, of course, I can’t tell my mom that because she will think I’m bad. Or worse: trying to be White."



Quintero pretty much establishes what the issues that drives her novel, especially Gabi’s struggles to be a modern Mexican-American young woman, in what is more of a patriarchal culture.

Among the very many things that happens in this book are:

– date rape

– teenaged pregnancy

– a gay teen coming out

– drug addiction

and some other things that I probably shouldn’t point out because spoilers.

But, I don’t know, it’s a lot. I don’t mean to say that this all couldn’t be happening to a group of friends and their families out there. I’m not an American teenager, maybe this is all more common than I imagine. When I was Gabi’s age, I was in school in Singapore, where uniforms are required, shoes had to be white, long hair on girls had to be tied up, boys’ hair couldn’t touch the collars etc. It just seems like it was far more innocent times then (obviously I feel like I am too old for this book….! Why couldn’t it have been written and published when I was an actual teenager?).

I adored Gabi’s growing into her own creativity, learning to write poetry, expressing her emotions in what she writes, and her letters to her father made me tear up.

But that cover. Can we talk about that cover? Having read the book now, I understand where the cover art is coming from but if I had randomly come across this book on the shelves of a bookstore or a library, I would never have picked it up.

I loved Gabi. I wrote in my Litsy review that I just wished I could give her a hug! She’s fierce, independent, strong-willed, smart and funny. And I love her honesty, her vulnerability, her strong bonds with her friends and family. What a great read this was. Why didn’t I read it earlier when everyone was saying it, just read it! ( )

While this did remind me of Real Women Have Curves (without the corny bits) and...I dunno...a thing I'll discuss in a spoiler that I am not sure is a thing, I love Gabi so dang much. The tone felt so authentic, like I was reading my own journal from senior year of high school, and even though some of her problems stemmed from grappling with a Mexican cultural heritage, her struggles are so universal to so many women reaching adulthood. I wish I had read books like this--books that delve way into consent, rape culture, body positivity, and women's hormones and urges that are OK--throughout my teens and 20s. At the very least, I would have felt less alone and powerless. At best, I might not have put up with some awful situations I went through. Also, she loves Steinbeck, so yeah.

The situation I'm still mulling over is when Gabi beats up German for raping Cindy. On the one hand, the way that entire ordeal went--everything from how Cindy finally had the courage to say something even to her closest friends, how Gabi processed it, how the school dealt with it, how Cindy reacted to Gabi's actions--was absolutely believable and, in many ways, pretty positive in terms of setting an example for how girls in real life might handle a similar situation. I don't know what it would have been like to experience this as a teen, but as an adult, having unfortunately been in Cindy's shoes, part of me *wishes* some of my best girlfriends would have been so supportive, and part of me is so mad that German still gets off scot-free. Yes, it's totally real life--of course Cindy has every right to her feelings, and yeah, boys and men almost never face any real consequences for their actions--but I can't wait for the day when women don't have to carry the burden of shame and physical and emotional scars for being victims of rape...in novels and in the real world. ( )

Oh, man, that was so achingly good. I look forward to reading more of Quintero's work in the future. ( )