[Book Review] With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo

Synopsis (from Goodreads) :

With her daughter to care for and her abuela to help support, high school senior Emoni Santiago has to make the tough decisions, and do what must be done. The one place she can let her responsibilities go is in the kitchen, where she adds a little something magical to everything she cooks, turning her food into straight-up goodness. Still, she knows she doesn’t have enough time for her school’s new culinary arts class, doesn’t have the money for the class’s trip to Spain — and shouldn’t still be dreaming of someday working in a real kitchen. But even with all the rules she has for her life — and all the rules everyone expects her to play by — once Emoni starts cooking, her only real choice is to let her talent break free.

My rating :

4.5/5 stars.

My review :

This book allows me to catch the invisible fire. Let’s be real – this book, its content, and everything about it are all splendid!

The story follows Emoni’s journey of being a teen mother, a student, a teenage girl who loves to cook – and super passionate with that very talent of hers – a daughter with commitments, etc. etc. The idea of emphasizing cooking as the protagonist’s main interest is undoubtedly smart, and it makes me feel excited to delve into the story. Luckily I’m not only loving the book because of the cover – I mean, come on, isn’t it gorgeous? – but the story itself instills some passion and it greatly attracts my humble attention.

Let’s begin with the book review. As someone who had read it, the plot was simply stunning, though I’ll have to be honest, there were parts that I felt could be positively improved. I loved meandering through Emoni’s journey with its very own ups and downs. The story was divided into a few parts and readers would get some random, adorable recipes at the beginning of the parts, exclusively representing the main character’s feelings or emotions. I loved how compelling women were in this book through some female characters representations. Emoni was a strong female character who stood up for herself, her family, and what she wanted in life. I loved the author’s endeavor in making women looked and behaved strongly in this book. I find this aspect vital for women in this twenty-first century to not be fooled in a patriarchal society and when it’s right for a woman to stand for herself, the girl needs to achieve that with her excellent guts and spray some mist of courage all over her body to put herself in a justified position.

As I went through the story, I noticed something that I truly, truly adored – the author only put about 10% of some shades of romance in this book and oh God, how I truly loved her doing that. It very much convinced me that the author paid attention to the actual story and didn’t let something else came in the way to ruin it. The plot, undoubtedly, did make me hungry as the main character would most of the time, cook some dishes and I had the urgency to fill my stomach with some good foods. Furthermore, the plot was a bit fast paced, which allows readers to finish this faster, yet still follow the plot development along the way.

Let’s move on to the characters. The author created a set of strong characters with their own stories. Each of them held on to their very own grandeur. The characters, I noticed, had developed into people who performed better than how they did in the beginning. No doubt, you would love Emoni and her family – especially her diminutive daughter! There was this one character that I really liked and it was Emoni’s culinary teacher. He was ostensibly splendid in the end, and I couldn’t help but to like him! Some other characters in this book were likeable per se, and their existences made the story even more amazingly intriguing.

I definitely loved Elizabeth’s writing style. Her writing definitely shined brightly, it positively outperformed. Thanks to her writing style, I was able to grasp the whole story and understand what it was really about. Her writing style allowed me to appreciate her characters and the overall plot.

To sum it up, this book was a great read, and I had a great time reading it. I’d highly recommend everyone to delve into the story and hopefully enjoy the story as much as I did!