In "The Mango Tree," Annabelle Tometich takes readers on a poignant and deceptively entertaining journey through the tangled branches of her life. From growing up in suburban Florida as the child of a mixed-race Filipina mother and a deceased white father to her career as a food critic, Tometich's memoir is a heartfelt exploration of family, identity, and belonging.

The story begins with a collect call from her mother, who is in the Lee County Jail after shooting at a man who was messing with her mangoes. As Tometich navigates the fallout from this shocking event, she reflects on her upbringing, her father's untimely death, and her own journey to find her place in the world.

With clear-eyed compassion and piercing honesty, Tometich delves into the complexities of her family's history, from their overflowing house filled with balikbayan boxes and juicy mangoes to her own pursuit of belonging. Through it all, she pays tribute to her hot-blooded, whip-smart mother, Josefina, who made a life and a home of her own against all odds.

"The Mango Tree" is a beautifully written memoir that will resonate with anyone who has ever felt like a "nobody" in their own life. Tometich's witty humor and heartfelt storytelling make this a book you won't want to put down. It is a love letter to her fellow Filipino Americans, her lost younger self, and the beloved fruit tree at the heart of her family. Above all, it is an ode to the strength and resilience of the human spirit.

I know very little about Filipino culture, so this was a riot to read! The personal stories were so engaging and colorful, but the timeline was a little bit confusing. Overall, a great memoir for a very specific audience!

First, let’s have a moment for the cover - so, so good. It’s why I clicked on it from the NetGalley list. And the story itself feels equally as bright and alive.

Tometich starts her memoir by sharing how her mom shot someone over mangoes. Of course, a statement like that can’t NOT have a story behind it.

Tometich takes us to her hometown, Fort Myers, Florida, and her chaotic household filled with plenty of tragic moments and cultural touchstones, some from her fiery, Filipina mother and several from the ‘90s.

I got a kick out of all the relatable references: Z Cavariccis, Hypercolor shirts, and yes, generic Asian slurs.

It takes us through Tometich’s childhood, her shove into adulthood being co-captain to her single mom, and into her time as a line cook-turned-food critic as an adult.

And though she eventually became a journalist, I think there’s a poet in there, too.

Her writing is lyrical with lines like “They use up pensions to snap up parcels of this copycatted paradise.” The voice is strong and the details make it interesting. (I’m still thinking about her friend Peter’s mom and the frogs.)

The timeline leads up to the mango shooting, which even that made me love her mom and her writing even more.

What a delight! The Mango Tree is funny, fast-paced, and excellently written. It was hard to put it down.
I live on the other coast of Florida and my husband is also obsessed with mangoes. We have a giant monster of a mango tree and quite a few smaller ones in the yard (besides the banana tree, the avocado tree, the passion fruit vine that wants to overtake our house and the house next door - you get the picture.) And once the pineapples fruit, all bets indeed are off on the hierarchy of tropical fruits in the family.
My other half definitely yells at someone trying to poach our precious mangoes at least once a season and likes to discuss how we could deter the thieves. Motion detection camera connected to the masterfully aimed sprinklers? A loudspeaker playing a “Don’t you touch the mangoes” song? In short, I understand.
This book was an easy and extremely enjoyable read. You’ll love it, especially if you live in Florida.

Thank you, NetGalley, the publisher, and the author, for providing the digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

You have to love a memoir that begins with the author's mother who is on trial for shooting a BB gun at a man driving away from her house.

This is the memoir of Annabelle Tometich, who was born to a Filipino mother and a caucasian American father. She deals with issues of being biracial while growing up, and does what she can to get ahead in life. She is embarrassed of her mother at times and doesn't speak the Tagalog language of her mother's language. That changes when her mom takes her to Manila, and she begins to see her mother in a new light.

I loved the characters in this memoir. Tometich does a great job of showing all sides of the people in her family. One moment you love her mom, and other moments, you will get angry with her. The same with her dad, her grandfather, her aunt, and her siblings.

There were times I was fully absorbed in her story, and there were other times that it was a little slow for me. That being said, I keep thinking about this book. The emotional drama that surrounded this family intrigued me, and it made me want to keep reading.

So why did the mother shoot the BB gun at the man? You will have to read the book to find out. All I know is that I will never look at mangoes in the same way.

Thank you Little, Brown and Company for sharing this book with me. This review is my honest opinion, and I give the book four out of five stars.

Tometich was not prepared to get a call from her mother telling her that her mother was in jail for shooting at someone who had raided her mango tree—but neither was Tometich entirely surprised. "When a person has lost so much, what’s a tree? When a person has lost so much, how can they lose anything more?" (loc. 5145*)

The mango-tree misadventures bookend the story, but the bulk of the material is about what came before: Tometich’s upbringing in Florida with her American father and Filipina mother, and her mother’s story more generally. Because: it was in many ways not an easy upbringing for Tometich, but neither was it an easy life for her mother.

"When I think of my mother, I don’t see her, I feel her. She’s a stake driven deep into the ground, the kind you see tethering newly planted trees and disaster tarps in place. She has kept our family from toppling sideways while punching a hole clean through the middle." (loc. 136)

If Tometich can’t quite reconcile her two understandings of her mother—one, as someone who slowly unraveled over time; two, as someone who won every academic award possible and thrived on a challenge and systematically set out to ensure that both she and her family members had as many advantages as she could give them—it’s because, for all that the things aren’t mutually exclusive, they’re just…still hard to reconcile.

The story is studded with fleshy, sun-ripened mangoes, not just from the tree at the center of Tometich’s mother’s court case but as something more broadly symbolic. "A mango farm isn’t like the apple orchards up north," writes Tometich, "or even the citrus groves that speckle the Sunshine State’s inland areas. Mango trees need room to breathe. They require space. If you plant them too close together, the humid air gets caught in their overlapped branches and the trees go soggy with rot. Too close together and their growth will be stunted, the trees will never reach their full potential." (loc. 832) Mangoes that her mother cherishes, mangoes that Tometich’s white acquaintances experience as more nuisance than treat, mangoes that come to represent the injustice of being forced to be a perpetual outsider in your home.

I love memoir for letting me into lives and experiences unlike my own, and "The Mango Tree" does that in more ways than one. 3.5 stars, and it will be interesting to see the discussion around this one.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Since my sister lived in Fort Myers for almost a decade, I enjoyed reading a book that took place there. I also enjoyed hearing about her trips to the Philippines. However, Annabelle’s story has some really sad parts. She was quite lonely as a child and felt unloved, not desired. I’m glad that she’s in what sounds like a healthy, happy marriage now.

The Mango Tree is journalist Tometich's memoir of growing as a mixed race (Filipino/white) girl in Florida. A lot of the book focuses on Tometich's complicated relationship with her immigrant mother, but she also details the traumas she endured as a child and the effects these traumas had on her. While the memoir follows her from childhood to adulthood, the details of her adult life are much more sparse and left me with some questions about the evolution of some of her family relationships. Generally, though, Tometich's writing is clear and paints a portrait of a family impacted by abuse, addiction, racism, suicide, and other traumas. Food plays a lesser but still important part of this debut memoir. My experiences reading memoirs by journalists is that they are often dry and lacking in emotion, but I had none of these impressions while reading The Mango Tree.

The Mango Tree A Memoir of Fruit, Florida and Felony made me laugh and made me cry. Annabelle Tometich describes a tortured life rich with family drama extending from Florida to the Philippines. The clash between her Filipina mother and her American father plus his mother fuels the saga as tragedy after tragedy slams this beleaguered family. The central role of the mango becomes symbolic of the sweetness along with the bitterness, even lending its evocative juice to the story. This unique book offers an intimate look into a different culture, complicated by the nature of this multicultural family.

Thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for the opportunity to read this ARC.

“When I was pregnant with my daughter, a family friend told me she knew I was having a girl because daughters steal their mothers’ beauty. I gritted my teeth, stifled a laugh, and managed to walk away without injuring anyone. I dismissed it as internalized misogyny, an old wives’ tale that had somehow survived in this woman’s family well into the year of our lord 2013. Now, however, I wonder. Maybe it’s not that we steal their beauty; maybe it’s that we as daughters, as children, tend to flatten our parents, compressing them into the characters we need them to be. We reduce them to the sidekicks, the villains, the kooky court jesters of our life stories. In some cases, we do this because we have to. Because parents are capable of serious soul-crushing harm, and we must minimize that to survive. But in doing so, we forget they have life stories of their own. They have reasons for their actions. Not always justifiable ones, but ones that should at least be considered.”

5 ⭐️ STARS EASY


This book was one that I could not put down. There depths the author takes you while you follow along on such a unique, but in reality somewhat common family dysfunction had me wanting to find the author at the local grocery store in Fort Meyers and thank her. Without giving too much away, it is one of those books that reminds you everyone is truly living a life behind closed doors. It reminds you to extend grace when your immediate reaction may have been judgement. Zero complaints - pace felt perfect, context and details felt appropriate, millennial references without being corny. Nothing but praise to the author. Will be getting a physical copy for my shelf and suggesting to anyone willing to add such a relatable story of self discovery to their own shelves!

As another Florida native (we do exist!) close to the same age as Annabelle, I can relate to so much of this book. The events that happened as she was growing up and the feelings as she fought for acceptance from her weird family are so perfectly described. I had my own family issues that I'm surprised never involved a call from someone in jail. I did not have to face the challenge of being Filipino, and I really liked learning more about the culture and Annabelle's struggle to feel as though she belonged. College and parts of Annabelle's adulthood brought even more things I could relate to. If you are a Florida child of the 80s, you must read this book.

Great memoir.

Annabelle is the oldest daughter of a Filipino mother (top of her class and trained as a nurse who has immigrated to S Florida) and a Northeastern American father (who is an orderly at the same hospital). Annabelle's parents relationship is tumultuous to say the least.

This is a "truth is stranger than fiction" and why I've been finding memoirs so interesting and captivating lately. Annabelle Tometich is no stranger to writing (she is a newspaper journalist and author of other books) and she does a great job in writing her memoir. Kudos. I highly recommend The Mango Tree.

I enjoyed the insight into the Filipino culture and the perceptions of being of mixed ancestry.

Thank you to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for approving my request to read the advance read copy of The Mango Tree in exchange for an honest review. Publication date is 2 April 2024.