In Francesca Padilla's debut young adult novel, What's Coming to Me, we're introduced to a teenager named Minerva. She works at an ice cream stand with a creepy boss, lives basically by herself due to her mother's chronic illness and hospitalizations, and dropped out of high school after an incident with her best friend's girlfriend.
So things are not going so well for Minerva.
That's why she gets the idea to take what she thinks she deserves. When the ice cream stand is robbed, Minerva realizes that, as an employee, she had access to the same money stolen by the robbers. She could have stolen it before them! And, according to rumor, there's more to steal at the ice cream stand. So Minerva and her neighbor, drug dealer CeCe, hatch a plan to stake out the ice cream stand, find out what's really going on there, and uncover the "treasure".
Of course, things don't go according to plan. She falls for her co-worker, a boy who is going off to college soon; her mom's cousin keeps trying to infiltrate Minerva's life; another co-worker at the ice cream stand is willing to do anything to become assistant manager; etc.
You get the idea.
Through it all, Minerva learns some life lessons, and I hope they are ones that young readers take to heart. (You know, like, don't deal or do drugs. Stay in school. Go visit your sick mama. Let people help you. Accept change.)
And while Minerva is learning lessons, the reader is also learning the truth about what's really been going on in Minerva's life!
This wasn't my favorite book, mainly because I had a hard time grasping where it was all taking place. The setting is a place called Nautilus, which, later on in the book is described as an island near New York. I don't think this is a real place (the only thing that came up in a Google search was a hotel on Nantucket), so I don't know if this is supposed to be like a Staten Island or what. Not quite understanding how to picture the locale geographically just bothered me.
I also found some of the characters annoying in their actions or in-actions, and I wasn't wild about the main character engaging in underage drinking and drugs, including driving her neighbor to sell drugs. Just something for parents to be aware of should your teen read this book. (Is this what today's teens do? I mean, I remember being a teenager and doing my math homework in my room while listening to the latest Hanson CD...)
I did appreciate the forward from the author, which goes into detail about how the idea for the novel came to her, how it took her years to get it written, and how she took inspiration from her own life to write a story about someone she could relate to.
What's Coming to Me is published by Soho Teen and will be available to purchase tomorrow. I received a free review copy from the publisher.
Comments
Post a Comment