Oh this is a beautiful one. Stories that navigate the often tumultuous relationship between mothers and daughters always find their way into my heart. This YA story in particular follows the story of Marisol Martin as she navigates grief, anger and sadness after her mother's untimely death. The path to acceptance is rocky, but Rogers navigates every detail of Marisol's pain so beautifully. There's something about her losing her mom almost right after a big blowout fight with harsh words spoken from her end.

How do you come to terms with the regret? How do you come to let go of the still lingering anger when the person you're angry at doesn't not exist in this world anymore?

The 'then' and 'now' timelines has great pacing and the main character's biracial (Filipina-American) identity is so fundamental to her experiences throughout. I learned so much, I felt so seen and I cannot wait to read more from this author.

Thank you to Colored Pages Tours and Fierce Reads/Feiwel & Friends for an e-ARC and finished copy of this book!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this review copy in exchange for an honest opinion. Review has been posted on Amazon.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me free access to the advanced digital copy of this book, as this book has already been published, I will not share my review on Netgalley at this time.

This book is full of raw emotions and I enjoyed it immensely. It discusses grief and loss in a deeply human way. I highly recommend this read.

This one is built on an increasingly common framework - a protagonist at odds with a conservative parent (often an immigrant) who then dies, leaving the protagonist drifting and at odd with her culture. This one takes the interesting approach of dealing only with the fallout of the self-destruction she's engaged in after her mother's death. An interesting read with plenty of reflection and populated with flawed characters.

Thank you, Fierce Reads, for blessing my shelves and imagination. Sharon C.F. Rogers eloquently captured grief, hitting rock bottom and slowly working your way out from under it all.

Such an important book! This is not your average YA
novel about grieving the loss of a parent. This is a powerful story about the ramifications of grief and all the ways loss affects our daily lives. Rogers does a masterful job showing all the elements of grieving if including what is so often missing-anger.

This is an important story and one that will serve so many kids.

So, I haven't quite typed out my review of this yet but here's some TW's that I noticed that you may want to be aware of and my take on the book's synopsis.

TW: car accident/hospital scene, underage drinking/alcoholism (?), slut-shaming (?), generational trauma, self-destructive behavior, animal/pet death

Marisol and her mother were about as far from mother and daughter as could be. With her Filipina mother wanting her to be the perfect daughter, Marisol felt that she was never good enough and constantly felt the need to defend herself from her mother’s criticisms. But, when her mother dies in a car accident, which Marisol believes was caused by their last argument, she finds herself on a downward spiral of self-destructive behavior, which ultimately culminates in her sleeping with said friends’ boyfriend—and then punching said friend in the face. But when seemingly perfect Elizabeth Parker enters the picture, Marisol discovers that there’s more to her story than meets the eye and a perspective that she was too angry to see.

I'd rather Burn Than Bloom is a coming of age novel about a girl dealing with her mother's passing.

The main thing I took from this novel is that everyone deals with grief differently. Marisol doesn't seem to have a great relationship with her mother, and we're never really told why. Her mother's sudden death left her wishing for her mom back even if it's to yell at her for no reason.

It's hard to get through most of the book because she was determined to remain angry. I guess I would be too when:

1. The last words I uttered to my mother before she died were of an argument.

2. When I have very little of my mother's culture to hold on to because my other parent does't know anything, or didn't bother to learn anything about it.

I loved the "realness" of this story, it felt very raw and emotional, and got me thinking about my own relationships and I love when books do that. This was a great work of art and I really enjoyed it.

Thank you to the publisher and Colored Pages Book Tour for a physical copy in exchange for an honest review.

I'D RATHER BURN THAN BLOOM is a powerful YA contemporary about a Filipina-American girl named Marisol Martin, who has a strained relationship with her mom. But when her mom suddenly passed away from a car accident, things got messy and self-destructive: she sleeps with her best friend's boyfriend and punches her in the face, letting her anger take over. But once she makes an unexpected friendship, Marisol starts to open up and learn more about herself and what life has to offer.

Rogers' heartbreaking debut took me on an emotional journey. The rich lyrical descriptions of Alberquerque, New Mexico set the mood and atmosphere to intertwine with Marisol's complex feelings of anger, grief, and guilt. The chapters switching from "Then" and "Now" emphasize Marisol's multiracial identity and character development with memories of her mom reconnecting her to her Filipino roots.

The narrative is well-paced, and it realistically captures the broken friendships and imperfect family dynamics as everyone copes with losses and changes differently. New friendships and hints of romance allow room for Marisol to grow with time and give her clarity to learn how to forgive herself and others to heal.

- I'D RATHER BURN THAN BLOOM is one of the toughest YA novels I've ever read. Flipping back and forth between the present and before her mom died, this book is deeply tangled in Marisol's anger, grief, and feelings of helplessness.
- Marisol's emotions felt real, and she exploded off the page. The small details are what had me taking breaks from the book, just the way details can knock the breath out of you when you're grieving a loss of your own.
- I had some issues with the pacing and how some plot threads ended, but overall I'm glad this book exists for kids who need to know they aren't alone in their overwhelming feelings.
•

Marisol Martin is a teen who has a troubled relationship with her mother. Nothing she does ever seems right according to her mother. Wether it be clothes, church, boys, school; she is in a neverending argument with her.
And then her mom suddenly dies in a car crash while she was underway to her work as a nurse in the hospital. The life of Marisol, her brother and father has never been the same since then, and everything is a mess after her mother's death. In alternating chapters, Marisol is thinking back on what she said to her mother the weeks before her passing, and the things she better had said instead. And she tries to connect more to her mother through her Filipino culture. At high school, life is also a mess since then, Marisol is angry at everything, and this gets her into fights and into a lot of trouble She tries to deal with her immense grief and guilt, makes new friends and tries to get her brother back on the right track.

This is a book about a teen girl dealing with immense grief. Marisol's journey through the story is not a light one where she made some kind of change. No, in this book she kind of stays in the same situation. It is more how she lands in this awful situation, messes up pretty bad (gets in a fight, doesn't go to the driving lessons her father arranged for her, makes out with the boyfriend of her best friend skipping school). It is a real and raw story that doesn't have a happy end. It is a story that many teens will recognize themselves in I think. What I loved also is how the author weaved the Filipino culture of Marisol's mom into the book, and how this relates to Marisol and her view on it, and the family dynamics of Marisol's family felt all very real.

This is not a book if you are into a lighter kind of YA story, but further on I found it very moving and real, and that's why I liked it.

4.5 stars

<i>Thank you to Colored Pages Tours, Fierce Reads, and Shannon C.F. Rogers for providing me with an e-ARC and finished copy in exchange for an honest review!</i>

This debut will hold a special place in my heart. It centers around my favorite themes in contemporary YA, grief and anger, while also navigating the challenges of growing up biracial. From a personal standpoint, I loved reading about a half-White, half-Filipino protagonist; I can usually find biracial rep or Filipino rep, but it was nice to relate so directly to Marisol. (Hey, Marisol, I avoided driving too...uh, I'll get my license eventually.) The writing is bold and heavy, alternating between the past and present, which is reflective of Marisol's regrets and acceptance. As with any book about the death of a parent, this was far from an easy read but is an engaging one with a solid pace. Even the smallest details and incidents bloom with pain as Marisol comes to terms with her grief. If you've enjoyed titles such as <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3960338332">Summer Bird Blue</a> by Akemi Dawn Bowman and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3429209686">You Know I'm No Good</a> by Jessie Ann Foley, you'll love <i>I'd Rather Burn Than Bloom</i>.

Really enjoyed this debut. The characters were beautifully layered and the story was extremely heartfelt. Love the different lenses of grief we saw through the eye of not only Marisol but her brother and father. Definitely recommending this story.

I'd Rather Burn Than Bloom had me questioning everything in my life, it was complicated and real/raw. I really enjoyed the story and found it to be an incredibly emotional story.

This story had me contemplating my own relationship with my mom. This was messy. This was emotional. This kept me glued to the story. This is the epitome of “hurt people hurt people.” I felt all of the emotions Marisol was going through, and I was rooting for her. I definitely recommend this one!

So good. Just go ahead and grab it now. No point debating, this is fantastic, just buy it. Marisol is grieving the loss of her mother, her mother that she never felt good enough for and that she didn't get along with. This book is a gut wrenching exploration of grief and the relationships between child and parent. There's plenty of guilt and bad choices, and they are all fully grounded in real people. This is about the slow, bumpy healing process.

Losing what feels like your only connection to your heritage is something I know all too well and I cried this entire book. The entire thing. I love Marisol to pieces, she is me and I am her and we are both far too angry for our own good. I love her.

I'd Rather Burn Than Bloom touched my soul in places I didn't know needed healing. The angry teenager that I was in high school needed this book so much, and reading it now, as an adult, I realize how long it took me to heal without a story like this in my life. Family is and always will be so messy in ways that are impossible to understand, but it's also okay that our stories are messy.

Grieving a family member becomes so much harder when that emptiness also cuts you off from such a large piece of you. It isn't just a relationship you grieve, it's yourself that you grieve. The pieces of you that you could have had if life were just a little bit different. There is a particular grief in losing that connection that far transcends simple loss and gets tied up in all the complexities of immigration, yearning, and being a teenager.

This book owns my entire heart and I'm so honored that I was able to read it. Shannon CF Rogers has truly given a gift to young adult literature and I am forever grateful that she shared.

A heart-wrenching and heartfelt story about a Filipina-American teen struggling with the death of her mother.

This novel was a great reminder that everyone grieves in their own way. We, of course, are in the perspective of Marisol but we also get a glimpse into how her younger brother and father are grieving as well.

This story felt eerily similar to my own. I am also Filipina-American and my mom unexpectedly fell into a coma when I was 20 years old. She never woke up and then passed a couple of years later. Similar to Marisol’s parents, my mom and dad met because of the military. Then to top it all off, my last name is Martin haha!

I also have two younger brothers and an older sister. Marisol’s story gave me a glimpse into some of the struggles my youngest brother may have been enduring because he was the same age as Marisol when we lost our mom. Specifically, I remember how his driving lessons go put on hold and all the driving scenes with Marisol reminded me of that. How Marisol dealt with her mother’s passing was so different from how I did, but I appreciated the difference. However, like Marisol, I did engage in some self-destructive behaviors, but that’s a story for another time.

I thought this novel gave a unique look into what it feels like to not only lose your mother, but a mother who was your connection to part of your culture. Growing up, my mom did not teach us Tagolog because she wanted to give us the best chance of assimilation. In other words, she didn’t want us to be “othered” due to an accent like she experienced. Prior to losing her, she had begun teaching me some phrases. I thought the author, Shannon C. F. Rogers, did a wonderful job at conveying the hole that a mother can leave especially when without her you no longer hear her language as often, participate in certain events, nor eat the same food. I had always planned to visit the Philippines with my mom and never got to; I feel a loss from all the stories I didn’t get a chance to hear about her life before kids, and I feel a connection to her through Filipino food dishes. There’s a scene in the novel where Marisol tries to make garlic fried rice and I instantly thought of eating this for breakfast with my mom. Something my sister has done is to recreate the dishes and has written them down to pass on.

This book can be a comfort to other Fil-Ams and a look into what it’s like for children of interracial and immigrant couples. The characters are imperfect and relatable. Although my review focuses on grief, I should also mention that this novel does cover coming-of-age, friendship, and sibling dynamics. This story was close to home for me, but regardless of your background, I think many will be touched by this story.