Historically Inaccurate

Bravo’s sincere but slow-moving debut opens with an unusual meet-cute: boy meets girl during the petty theft of a piece of cutlery. Still reeling from her mother’s deportation to Mexico, 18-year-old college freshman Soledad “Sol” Gutierrez impulsively agrees to steal a fork from an elderly couple’s home in a bid to join the history club and find her place at Westray Community College. Following a disastrous mid-theft encounter with her victims’ college-age grandson, Ethan Winston, who is Black, Sol’s growing sense of guilt leads her to befriend him and attempt making amends; amid further club activities and capers, an unlikely romance blossoms between them. When the club’s initiation exploits attract unwanted attention, Sol and Ethan’s relationship—and the new life Sol has constructed for herself—threaten to collapse. While the novel’s inclusive supporting cast is underwritten and its first-person, slice of life–style narration occasionally veers into the mundane, Bravo’s portrait of how deportation of a loved one scars those left behind elevates the material: Sol’s choices, in life and love, do not exist inside a vacuum. The result is an earnest and timely read with convincing stakes. Ages 12–up. [em](Sept.) [/em]