Gabi, A Girl in Pieces - Isabel Quintero

I loved this book so much. I’ve recently been rereading a lot of my teenage journals while writing memory essays for my collection, and Gabi, A Girl in Pieces could literally have been pulled from them. I relate to Gabi so much (even though it’s been many years since I have been a teen).

Gabi, A Girl in Pieces is narrator Gabi Hernandez’ senior year journal, where she records her feelings, her everyday life, school, poems, life events, and random thoughts. It really reads just like a journal too, something which writer Isabel Quintero pulls off fantastically. On the surface Gabi’s days may be mundane, routine, but her life is the exact opposite. Her father is an addict, her mother tries her best to keep her family together, one of her best friends is pregnant, and the other has just come out to his very anti-gay family. Gabi is also stuck between two worlds, a born and raised American girl with Mexican immigrant parents, and her journal shows how difficult, but also rewarding, it can be to navigate both of these worlds.

Gabi could easily have been me: living with an addict parent, dealing with parental death, growing up trying to fit in and being oneself at the same time, using writing as escape, navigating different cultures... So smart but unable to see it, to understand all the potential that lays ahead. Reading this book gave me so many feels, and I wept, and laughed out loud, so many times. I really, really loved this book, loved how many of the important topics it brings up, and loved how it deals with them in a way that a teen would.