Sal & Gabi Break the Universe, by Carlos Hernandez

    Another of this season's OBOB books, and the 2020 winner of the Pura Belpre Award for Latino/Latina/LatinX literature, Sal & Gabi is the fantastical story of two universe-bending teens navigating life in and out of middle school. It is one of several Rick Riordan Presents projects.  The book begins with a Riordan introduction and the book cover quotes him glowing about the book as well. Due to the Belpre Award as well as the other rave reviews from teen book sources, I ignored the self-gratifying intro and front cover quote by Riordan, which seemed a little suspect, since his publishing company was responsible for the book...kind of like an author writing their own glowing book review and printing it on the front cover along with the title. 

    The narrator of this story, Sal, is sarcastic. Very sarcastic. More so than many adults I know, especially so for a teen.  I was 200 pages into the book before I was finally able to settle into this sarcasm as the way the story was going to be told. Sarcasm, to me, is a poor way to hide either insecurity or feelings of superiority, which comes back to someone feeling insecure, in my opinion. I don't do sarcasm well, nor do I usually spend any time around anyone who uses sarcasm as their source of humor or dealing with people and the world around them. Needless to say, author Hernandez chose this as the voice of his narrator. It often came across as the author himself trying to be funny for his teen readers but not knowing exactly how to do that, so guessing (wrongly) that sarcasm was the right choice. Wrong.

    The underlying storyline of Universe wasn't bad, and in fact in someone else's hands it might have been done much better. I loved the LatinX characters, language, and viewpoints about life, school especially. But the sarcasm was SO prominent I had to force myself to finish this book. By the time I got to the end, I only wanted the book to be done so I could go find something less sarcastic to read. I think Universe won the Belpre because of its LatinX setting and characters. That part I enjoyed. But that was not enough to save the rest of the book. I know there is a second book in this series, and I hope Hernandez has changed his approach to writing. I don't think I'll be finding out, unless one of you shares with me how great it is. I give this book 3 paws, and 1 of those is only because of the OBOB listing and the Belpre Award. 

If you want good LatinX writing, try anything by Pam Munoz Ryan, or Merci Suarez Changes Gears, or even First Rule of Punk...all much better than this book. Onward to my next great read!