Title: Clap When You Land
Author: Elizabeth Acevedo
Narrators: Elizabeth Acevedo and Melania-Luisa Marte
Rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Bookstore Link – Amazon Link
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I read this book immediately after I finished Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones, because they both have a similar theme of men having two families. This book, however, was very different from SIlver Sparrow in many ways.
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It was my first Acevedo book, and wow! I listened to the audiobook and I was really surprised when the narration started. I had to check again to be sure I wasn’t listening to a poetry collection. It was so nice the way poetry was woven with prose in this book. I only got the ebook after finishing the audiobook, and that’s when I saw that it was written in verse. The author, Elizabeth Acevedo, was one of the narrators, and they both did an amazing job.
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The story is centered around two half-sisters, Yahaira and Camino, who lived on separate continents and shared a father. Their father lived two different lives, and it wasn’t until he died on his way to spend the summer with Camino that a series of discoveries began to happen.
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Told from the points of view of the two sisters (each narrated by a different person), we get to see them deal with grief on many layers. Apart from dealing with the death of a father, they also have to come to terms with a whole new sister. We see them navigating what it means to build a relationship with each other.
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Each sister also has a life of her own with her own issues. Yahaira, in New York, deals with how terribly her mother is handling her father’s death. Camino is dealing with life in DR and someone who’s making life very difficult for her. It was interesting to watch them navigate all of this alone and together.
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I really loved this book and definitely recommend this to everyone.
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Blurb:
In a novel-in-verse that brims with grief and love, National Book Award-winning and New York Times best-selling author Elizabeth Acevedo writes about the devastation of loss, the difficulty of forgiveness, and the bittersweet bonds that shape our lives.
Don’t miss the audiobook, read by Elizabeth Acevedo, the beloved author and narrator of The Poet X, winner of an Odyssey Honor and an AudioFile Earphones Award winner.
Camino Rios lives for the summers when her father visits her in the Dominican Republic. But this time, on the day when his plane is supposed to land, Camino arrives at the airport to see crowds of crying people….
In New York City, Yahaira Rios is called to the principal’s office, where her mother is waiting to tell her that her father, her hero, has died in a plane crash.
Separated by distance – and Papi’s secrets – the two girls are forced to face a new reality in which their father is dead and their lives are forever altered.
And then, when it seems like they’ve lost everything of their father, they learn of each other.
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