Growing up is difficult and Julia is especially challenged as she struggles with the recent death of her sister. She has a strained relationship with her mother who is critical of Julia and fearful of the many ways that American life is pulling her daughter further and further from her cultural roots in Mexico.

As Julia discovers secrets that indicate her sister is not as perfect as she appeared, she sinks into a deeper depression over her own lack of self esteem and struggle for a bit of independence. Julia grows over time, finding a sense of self worth and learning ways to bridge the gap of communication with her parents.

This is the story of Julia, who is not the perfect Mexican daughter. She is outspoken, and she spends most of her time being grounded. When the book opens, Julia and her family are at the funeral of Julia's older sister Olga. Olga was the perfect Mexican daughter. She was obedient, loving, and enjoyed spending most of her time at home with her family. Olga was hit by semi-truck, so her death was unexpected and surprising.

The book follows the next two years of Julia's life. She is struggling to find her self and figure out what life may look like after high school. She has an inspiring teacher, in her AP English teacher, who helps her develop her love of reading. He leads the class in thorough discussions of literature and Julia loves this. As she struggles with her grief, this is a welcome distraction.

Shortly after the funeral, Julia is struggling to sleep and begins spending nights in her sister's room. Soon she begins finding some strange items that lead to questions about her sister. She begins thinking that her sister may not have been so perfect and was certainly hiding something. Sometime scandalous and possibly dangerous. Over the next two years, Julia attempts to put the pieces together and uncover her sister's secrets.

This book is a great read for adolescent readers. I love that the main character is a POC, and that she is struggling to identify with her family and herself during a challenging time - preparing for college. The book also does a great job of exploring her grief and presenting her with decisions that have big consequences.

I highly encourage this book as an independent read to motivate adolescent readers.

I got an eARC of this from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Julia has never been the perfect daughter. The perfect one was her older sister, Olga. When Olga dies, the family shatters from grief. Julia's mother begins putting her attention on Julia, in hopes of avoiding dealing with her grief. This creates great issues for Julia, who feels stifled. Julia can't have any opinions or do anything right, so instead she sneaks around her mother. Julia is finding out new information about Olga, which paints her as a very different daughter than everyone believed. Will Julia ever be able to be herself and fit in with her family?

None of the characters in this book were likeable, but to be fair they were going through some serious emotional turmoil. I thought this was a solid novel.

This book went a lot of places that I didn't expect, particularly when it came to the unapologetic discussions of depression, anxiety and trauma, as well as familial expectations and the lies we tell both ourselves and others. The characters are bold and vibrant and the writing drew me in. But I felt an ultimate disconnect from the story and am looking forward to reading more Latinx novels that focus on the vibrancy and joy of our communities, despite the struggle, rather than reinforcing ideas of immigration being nothing but misery.

I couldn’t get into the book. It was really slow to start.

Julia Reyes feels like no one in the world understands her, and is caught between her mother's repressive, traditional Mexican expectations of her to be submissive, spend her time cooking and cleaning, and living with her parents until she marries someone appropriate, and her own desires to be independant and make her own decisions. She dreams of going to college far away and becoming a writer. She will never measure up to the memory of her sister Olga, recently killed in a tragic accident, who in their parents' eyes was the "perfect Mexican daughter". But, as Julia struggles to make her parents understand her need for independence and privacy, she discovers that Olga was not the perfect daughter everyone thought she was.

I've seen this book compared to "Gabi: A Girl In Pieces" and in many ways it is similar. Gabi and Julia are both struggling against their mothers' rigid, traditional gender roles and expecctations, and desire to go away to college and make their own choices in life. They both experience tragic deaths in their families and have friends going through the dramas of teen pregnancy (or the possibility of) and not being accepted by their families because of sexual orientation. Food is also prevalent in both stories, and both express their feelings through their writing.

However, while Gabi seems to be fairly well-adjusted and deals with her issues with humor and confidence, Julia's story is much darker and more melancholy. Julia feels overwhelmed, and trapped in a life she doesn't want, and feels powerless to get out. Her depression and anxiety become more severe after her sister's death, until she can no longer cope. While I would have to say I enjoyed the lighter tone of Gabi's story more, this book is very powerful and could possibly help others who may be dealing with depression and anxiety as well, I think this book does a lot to help de-stigmatize mental illness, and illustrates how a combination of medication and therapy can help. The secondary story of Julia's sister Olga also adds an additional element of mystery to the story.

While the Mexican culture and immigration issues do play a significant part in this story, I think most people can relate to the struggle between others' expecations of them and what they want for themselves to some degree, and many people can relate to the feelings of frustration and despair that Julia has, so it certainly should have appeal to a wide audience.

Recommended for teens and adults.

White people like me are unlikely to get this book or get much from it either. It’s just a fact because this book is for and about all the Latinx kids chafing in their households and family traditions but still in love their heritage and culture because identity is cimplicated. Some of what Julia lives with because it’s a Mexican thing or just something her mom Amá just does are downright abusive. Even after learning about what Amá went through and why she is the way she is, it’s hard to forgive her for the way she treated Julia. Insulting Julia to her face so many times! Good God!

Julia is an abrasive girl narrating a very character-driven book, so her personality will either make it or break it for readers. She’s also diagnosed with depression later in the book, adding dimension to portrayals of the disease. The mere word makes you think “sadness all the time,” but that isn’t always how you see it. Some people, like Julia, are constantly angry instead. There is no single way depression expresses itself and we can’t forget that. What’s undeniable above all is how well-written Julia is in her fury and familial claustrophobia.

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter is very pro-medication/therapy for dealing with mental illness too. I swear, I’m going to start a definitive list of books like these for teens because THERAPY AND MEDICATION THAT FIGHTS BACK AGAINST MENTAL ILLNESS IS GOOD. DON’T LET THE STEREOTYPES ABOUT THE TWO STOP YOU.

My one true sticking point comes when Julia insults someone’s hair by saying the woman has an “asexual mom haircut.” I don’t appreciate my sexuality or anyone else’s used as an insult! (Well, except for heteros because it doesn’t hurt anyone, participate in systemic discrimination, or happen all that often, which therefore makes it hilarious. See: white people jokes.)

My best friend is Latina with roots stretching from Mexico to Peru. Her first language was Spanish and she was downgraded from advanced classes in junior high to regular-level classes for the first half of high school because her eighth-grade English teacher didn’t think she spoke well enough to remain in advanced classes despite having excellent grades. Her relationship with her family as of late has also been very complicated.

If she were a fan of prose novels, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter is THE book I’d hand to her. Something tells me she’d find a kindred spirit in Julia. I hope its place on the NBA longlist will help get it into the hands of more Latinx teens who need it! If you’re a white person like me, I hope you do your part to get this book to the readers it’s for. If you’re not, I doubt you needed me to tell you this book is worthwhile. You’re smart like that.

Julia's older sister, Olga, was the perfect Mexican daughter until she died in a tragic traffic accident. Julia's mom uses her grief to point out how imperfect of daughter Julia is in comparison to Olga. Julia doesn't want to stay at home like Olga did; she wants to go to college in New York and become a famous writer. In an effort to better know her sister, Julia starts to follow clues and realizes Olga may not have been so perfect either.

A thoughtful and funny book about family expectations and growing up in a Mexican-American home.

Julia is miserable. It's not been that long since her sister Olga died, and along with the pain from her sister being gone, her mother has now turned her sights on Julia. She finds the attention stifling, and it seems she can never do anything right.

After rummaging in Olga's things one night, Julia finds a few items that suggest maybe Julia didn't know her dowdily dressed sister as well as she thought she did. It starts her on a road to find out what her saintly sister was doing with the scandalous items, and to figure out who Julia is when she's not feeling like she has to live up to everyone's expectations.

A beautiful tale of a girl defying the expectations of traditional parents she feels are stuck in the past, and figuring out what she wants to do with her life. Make sure to add this to your book list--it appeals to young and older alike.

Julia is far from perfect. She's rebellious, irritable. A teenage misanthrope. But she and her parents are still reeling from the death of her supposedly perfect older sister, Olga, who walked in front of a truck while texting. Devastated by this loss, her mother pressures Julia to conform to her own conservative values, and Julia complies as best she can. Her best isn't very good, and their relationship frays. Julia has also discovered evidence that Olga may not have been the perfect Mexican daughter they believed her to be.

I became caught up in this story very quickly, so much so that I put it down only when I had to go to sleep or to work. Is it a perfect book? No. I felt Julia's willingness to open up with a counselor came a bit too easily. She didn't keep her guard up at a moment when she would have felt most vulnerable. But the author, Erika L. Sánchez, kept the story moving along so well, that this wasn't a deal breaker for me.

When Julia is sent to visit her grandmother in Mexico, we see a different side of her. It is there she discovers that her sister was not the only one with a secret, that her parents suffered terrible trauma on the journey to the US. No one is quite who Julia believed them to be, but they are deeper, more complex characters, capable of more strength than she had ever suspected.

Other reviews have referred to Julia's lack of likability. Call me a misanthrope too, if you must, but I didn't have a problem with her, especially since at about the time her personality reaches its crescendo, the reader realizes that this is a girl who is deeply, clinically depressed and in real trouble. I tend to be sensitive to unsympathetic protagonists and will bail if I dislike a narrator. It never occurred to me to bail on this one.

I AM NOT YOUR PERFECT MEXICAN DAUGHTER is a welcome addition to contemporary YA literature about the Latina experience in the US. I enjoyed the setting in Chicago. There are plenty of books about Latinos in the Southwest or in New York, so I appreciated this change from the familiar. (Latinos in the contemporary South, anyone? I'm trying to convince my students to tell that story because it's theirs.)

Love, love, love!! I absolutely LOVED this book! I felt like I was reading about myself and just loved that connection with the characters and their lives. It was refreshing, comforting, and familiar. Definitely one of my favorite reads of the year!!

TW: suicide attempt, self-injurious behaviour, discussions of -isms

This was absolutely beautiful. An unique experience. It's not a perfect book, I actually found a lot of things I'm not happy with. But it's a book that prompt me to write this review as soon as I finished it because I needed to discuss all the different nuances and aspects that Erika Sánchez pours in this book. First, I have to say I'm not Mexican, I'm from Argentina. It's Latin America, which means that there are a lot of things about our culture that are similar (a LOT that are different). Sometimes Julia's mom would say something that came out exactly like my mom would say it. There are a lot of good things about our identities, but there are also a lot a lot of flaws. And those two extremes and all the things in between are described in this book. The thing is that sometimes they were discussed thoroughly, and sometimes the main character (and I believe the author as well) was part of those good and bad things and showed a bit of that sometimes "traditional" mind that a lot of latinamerican people have.

I don't know how I'm going to talk about everything I want to talk about but I'll try. The writing was beautiful. It was dark, gruesome and sometimes cruel. It had no filter and I believe it showed perfectly all the different things teenagers go through. It had an honest teenager voice that had so much development in the two years this book takes place. Especially since we follow Julia since she was 15 until she was leaving for university, which are very crucial years. It was a hard, bumpy journey. Julia was super unlikeable most of the time but the more you got to know her, the happier you were at seeing her grow. I must admit I was a bit biased because I saw a lot of my flawed, awful teenager self in her. All judgy living in a traditional small neighbourhood and closed minded culture and suddenly believing you're better than everyone and at the same time hating yourself (because of your fucked up brain). And those things were part of the complex relationships we saw in this book. Her friendship with Lorena, her relationship with her dead sister Olga and all the things she wanted to know about her, her relationship with her mom all up and down and unstable, the one with her dad all calm and impersonal, the one with Connor and Esteban, even the one that she had with Juanga. All of those were so different in so many ways and her mental health was such an important factor in the way she communicated with them.

Also, talking about her mental health. This book showed such a raw portrayal of what is like to deal with grief, ptsd but also depression and anxiety. How they creep up on you and they take you down without you even realising. How important it is to ask for help, how it affects your relationship with the people around you but most importantly the relationship that you have with yourself. It showed how her parents viewed her mental illnesses and how they didn't understand her but they tried to anyway. And I loved how nothing was romanticised, everything was showed in an accurate and truthful way. It's important that she continued with her treatment and that she always talked about how important it is to take medication.

Even though this book talked about Mexican culture and heritage in detail and showed the big picture, you could also see little things interwoven with the narrative that was just gorgeous to see. One of the moments when I cried the most is when she talked about the song "Todo Cambia" by Mercedes Sosa (an argentinian singer) because it's a beautiful and heartbreaking song at the same time. But also I laughed a lot when she said she hated Maná because same. The descriptions of food were absolutely everything I wanted. It made me hungry like 99% of the time. The depiction of the differences between living in the United States as a daughter of Mexicans and actually living in Mexico were so important to me. Both of those things come with good and bad things but they are completely different experiences (not that I know about any of them from actual experience but I'm talking about the differences between latinxs in the US and latinxs living in Latin America).

I want to talk for a bit about the things I didn't like. Firstly, I understand that growing up with latinamerican parents can give you phobic thoughts and internalise them and most of the things people or Julia herself say in this book were called out, by her or by other people. But there were a few things that went without calling out like Julia saying slurs like queer (this might defer because some queer people don't think is a slur) and g*psy. Also, there was a lot of body shaming. I get that there were a few redeemable moments, especially in her relationship with her own body, but in general she said things like "I've seen her eat three tortas in one sitting. Thyroid my ass" (talking about a woman who said she was fat because of her thyroid). or "even if they're fat, they move as if they think they're fabulous" (this one is not that bad but the wording really annoys me). Apart from that, another time she said that someone has a "asexual mom haircut" (what?). And there were more moments that were kind of sexist or homophobic that made me uncomfortable.

In general, this book was really important for me to read. To recognise the things in latinamerican culture that are good and bad, the realisation that even though you grew up in a certain type of household doesn't mean that you can't be better than the people and the generations that came before you, all of those things meant a lot to me. How you can keep the good things and try and change the bad ones (especially regarding bigoted thoughts). Even though I read a review that said the suicide attempt made everything better, I don't think that. Everything got better because she got therapy, medications and she grew as a person but all of that was a process, it didn't change as soon as she did that and you could see from the start of the book that she was spiralling. I don't know for other people because experiences with mental health are so different but for me it was a very accurate portrayal.

One of the best YA novels of the year, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, introduces the world to the perfectly imperfect Julia Reyes, who is dealing with the sudden and tragic death of her seemingly perfect sister Olga. Julia's concerns are those universally shared by every high school student who is ready to graduate and move on with her life, and become independent of her parents. Teens will find many connections between themselves and Julia, but may also learn something new. Julia's parents are undocumented, and the story tells the story of how they came to be in Chicago with Julia and her sister. Julia longs for freedom from her strict parents, but struggles with depression after her beloved sister is killed by a truck. Her life is also complicated by clues that her sister left behind that indicate that she may not be the perfect daughter that her parents thought she was. Julia longs to find herself, be free to be herself and also longs for the truth. In order to do so, she must face her demons and learn more about her family's past. This excellent novel is highly recommended. It is compared to Sherman Alexie's Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, but it offers readers a fresh new voice in the narrator Julia Reyes. This novel should be in every high school library.

I read the last few pages of this book while listening to "Todo Cambia" by Mercedes Sosa, when Julia mentioned it. The song is the perfect soundtrack to this book, and the tears just started flowing her voice sang about how everything changes...Julia's story is sad, frustrating, hopeful, beautiful, full of hurt, secrets, and dreams. Just like life. I loved learning about each of Julia's family members' lives...it took me back to when I had the shocking realizations that my parents had lives before I knew them, and they sacrificed dreams in order to embrace realities. Anyway, this book was modern yet nostalgic, and I think anyone can relate...you don't have to be a teenager, Mexican, child of immigrants, or the black sheep of your family.