I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez came on my radar because of the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge and then Stephany reviewed it and said it was okay. 

Julia is the youngest daughter in a Mexican family living in Chicago. Her parents came over from Mexico under pretty bad circumstances and just as the book is beginning, her older sister dies in a tragic accident. Julia is struggling. She can't wait to move out, away from her stifling family and their expectations that she behave more like Olga, her "perfect" dead sister. She learns that maybe Olga wasn't so perfect, though, and soon Julia is questioning everything in her life.

Look, I'm just the audience for YA anymore. I just kept wanting to shake Julia, tell her that she needed to get her head out of her ass and stop being an insufferable brat, and remind her that having two loving parents is infinitely better than the alternative. Julia does have a lot on her plate and her sister dying is really terrible, but Julia is also an entitled jerk. And she's mean. And maybe she's just a teenager being a teenager, but I did not enjoy the time I spent with her. 

I know I'm old because I honestly wanted the book to be told from her parents' points of view. 

I regret finishing this one. 2/5 stars

Lines of note:

I know I should clean, but whenever I look at the mess, I think, what’s the point? Nothing feels like it has a point anymore. (location 195)

I mean, doesn't everyone think this when they clean? It's a viscious cycle - the cleaning is never done and as soon as you stop, you have to do it all over again.

...skinny, little guy who looked like an aardvark...(location 323)

I like to note animal/human metaphors. To be honest, I don't know what an aardvark looks like, so this meant nothing to me at the time.  Okay, I looked it up. Aardvark below. It's pretty cute, but I can see how this is a mean thing to say about someone. 

Kelly Abram - https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/175359469

I seriously don’t know what she saw in him, because not only was he ugly, he had the personality of a boiled potato. (location 323)
More meanness from our main character.

Everyone is desperately trying to hang on to the sunshine, enjoying the unexpected warmth before winter takes a cold gray crap on the city and makes us all miserable again. (location 552)
I feel this in my very soul. It was lovely for the last two days and today I left the house without a coat and now it's cold and rainy and I regret not having a coat with me. 

If I end up being an office lady who wears slacks and changes into white sneakers to walk home from the train, I’ll just jump off a skyscraper. (location 589)
Were we all this mean and judgmental as teens? (I may feel attacked because I have to switch out shoes to walk the dog.)

There are hundreds of spam emails from many different companies. I guess the spam bots don’t know when someone has died. It seems so disrespectful to advertise to the dead. 50% OFF STOREWIDE!! BUY ONE GET ONE FREE SHOE SALE!!! VITAMINS FOR THE PERFECT BIKINI BODY. (location 2705)
This is an interesting observation. One time Bestest Friend told me that she had put me in charge of her Facebook account in case of her death. Apparently that's a thing you can do. I remember laughing, but it's not really funny, is it? I suppose our electronic estates will need to be settled when we die, just as our physical assets will. (I've written about my angst about the state of my blog when I die. How will my readers find out? Will I just stop updating and no one will ever know what happened?)

“Julia, sometimes in life you don’t get to do what you want to do. Sometimes you have to deal with what’s given to you, shut up, and keep working. That’s it.” (location 3613)

This is from Julia's father. It's no wonder I wanted to read a book centered on him.

Things I looked up:
Cepillín, that scary Mexican clown who looks like a rapist but everyone loves for some reason. (location 125)

Ricardo González Gutiérrez was a Mexican clown as well as a singer, TV host, and actor. He died in 2021. 

Cepillín in 2018

The House of Bernarda Alba (location 355) - A play written by the Spanish dramatist Federico García, completed in 1936, two months before García was assassinated during the Civil War

chambelan (location 1606) - A male member of the court of honor at a quinceañera 

Hat mentions (why hats?): 

...usually walk around the apartment wrapped in a blanket and wearing a hat, looking like a fool. (location 2106)

He’s not even wearing a hat or scarf, so his face is bright red. (location 2129)

His face is flushed from the cold, and he looks cute in his big, puffy jacket and purple stocking hat. (location 2142)

Their husbands, tío Raul and tío Leonel, stand next to them, both wearing cowboy hats. (location 2818)

After Los Tigres score their first goal, a dark guy in a cowboy hat comes toward us with bottles of Coke and plastic bags of pork skins slathered in red salsa.  (location 3046)

“Buenos días,” he says, and tips his hat. (location 3119)

Today Esteban is wearing jeans, a faded Beatles T-shirt, and a straw cowboy hat. (location 3168)

Esteban takes off his cowboy hat and looks toward the mountains. (location 3220)

“Is he wearing a hat?” (location 3401)