href="http://authorslatino.com/wordpress/archives/849" rel="trackback" title="Permanent Link to Kelsey Day One Teen Book Tour">Kelsey Day One Teen Book Tour
Kelsey The Book Scout
Book Review of Gringolandia
Kelsey was Day One for the new Teen YA Book Tour at
http://thebookscout.blogspot.com/2009/10/gringolandia-lyn-miller-lachmann.html
Wow! Gringolandia is going to be a really hard book to review. It was such an amazingly personal look at something I’ve barely even heard about. The scenes where Marcelo was describing what had happened to him just tore my heart. It’s scary to think something so horrible can still happen today and in a country not so far from our own. The details were amazing and the story just flowed completely. Every character, every twist in the plot, every event- it all was amazing. I couldn’t put it down from the first page. It was one of those books that as soon as I finished I just sat there for a little bit thinking about it. I’m not usually one for “sad” books, but I highly recommend Gringolandia to everyone.
The chapters were different narrations at times and it really opened my eyes to each person’s perspective. For me, the scariest parts were Marcelo’s. Although, reading about Daniel’s reaction to seeing his father after six years of torture and imprisonment was horrible in itself. This is definitely a young adult novel, but the descriptions of torture were vivid, and you could feel the characters pain. Definitely for high school students plus. I hate books where they skimp over what’s actually happening, to “protect young readers.” Gringolandia was refreshing and proved to me there are still some authors more concerned with the truth then what some people want. The vivid details were what added to my love of this novel. It’s hard to say I loved it because even when I was finished it still haunted me, but I learned a lot about time I’ve never read about before.
All in all, I would highly recommend this book to people, and have already shoved it into my family’s hands insisting they read it. Gringolandia is a vivid, terrifying look at life in Chile in the 80s and a book I will remember for a long time to come and I am anxious to read more by Lyn Miller-Lachmann.