Title: Beyond the Gardens
Author: Sandra C. Lopez
Page Count: 432
My Rating:
2 TURTLES: A so-so read. It had some
redeeming qualities, but not enough to recommend.
Amazon
Description:
At
the age of 18, Esperanza Ignacio begins her college years at an upscale Los
Angeles art school, where she studies to fulfill her long-term dream in
Animation. But she soon learns the truth to the old folktale: "you can
take the girl out of the barrio, but you can't take the barrio out of the
girl." Even though she's getting financial aid, Esperanza works a
part-time job during her break from classes just to make ends meet. Her
roommate, Anna, is what she calls a "chicana from Beverly Hills"
because of the rich daddy and the new car she got for her quinceañera.
Things get a little
confusing for Esperanza when an old friend comes
looking for her, hoping to start a meaningful relationship. But is Carlos
the right guy for her? She never even considered him to be anything more than a
friend since high school. Then comes Jake, a gorgeous mechanic, who shares her
passion for books and loves her for who she is. What's a girl to do?
Strength and
determination help pave the way for the future. And, as she approaches her
graduation, she is faced with a difficult decision: should she leave Los
Angeles and leave behind her family, her home, and everything she's known? Ever
since she was born in the California barrio of Hawaiian Gardens, she's always
had to look over the fence, wondering what she's been missing. Now she's taking
a flying leap over to see what's beyond the little barrio. What's beyond her
family, her friends, and her past? What's beyond the little nothing town, where
dreams don't exist? What's beyond The Gardens? Is it life, love, a future? The
story of Esperanza is finally concluded in this wildly entertaining and
heart-warming sequel.
Review:
I received this book for review from
the author. I had reviewed her other book, Esperanza,
last year and liked it well enough to want to read the next installment in the
story. Unfortunately, much of the same things that annoyed me in Esperanza continued in Beyond the Gardens. And while I might
have been able to overlook these things to an extent in one novel, having to
read four hundred more pages with similar errors and annoyance made me less
inclined to rate this book favorably.
One of my big issues with this book was
the amount of grammatical errors, particularly with tense agreement. As a
writer, I know how easy it is to be plugging along in past tense and switch
over to present without thinking about it, but when the discrepancies make it
onto the final product, it can be really disorienting and disrupting for the
reader. I also recently read a book that switched tenses so badly I never
actually figured out which tense it was supposed to be. Thankfully, this book
is nowhere near that inconsistent, but that book did make me particularly
sensitive to books randomly changing tenses, no matter the length of time.
Another thing I noticed in the first
book that reoccurred in this one was the plot structure. Esperanza followed the title character through all four years of
high school and ended with graduation. Beyond
the Gardens was the same, except it followed her through college. This
structure made more sense in the first book since it followed Esperanza’s path
from adolescence to adulthood, but even then it dragged. With Beyond the Gardens, though, I thought
the structure worked even less because their wasn’t even the overarching goal
of Esperanza reaching adulthood. It felt like a lot of sub-plots strung along
for four years that all tied up around the time of Esperanza’s college
graduation. It might have been the author’s intention to have college be the
overarching plot, but the only scenes we have of her college experience where
in depth descriptions of some of her classes, down to snippets of the
professor’s lectures. Any conflict that occurs within this area – such as
Esperanza struggling in a subject – resolves itself within a few pages. This
book took me a while to finish because I was bored, I didn’t feel the plot had
direction. Even memoirs that follow a person’s life tend to focus on one aspect
of a person’s life, they don’t try to follow it in its entirety.
On top of the plot, part of the reason
the book was a slower read for me was that I couldn’t really get invested in
the characters. Many of the minor characters, which could have been interesting
were cheapened either by Esperanza’s shallow, generalized descriptions of them
or by the fact that they revealed themselves to be fairly one sided through the
plot. Two characters, that really grated against my nerves were Carlos and
Carla, twins who were Esperanza’s best friends growing up. They got a little on
my nerves in book one because the only thing Carla would talk about is how
perfect Esperanza would be with Carlos after Esperanza repeatedly said she
didn’t see Carlos like that. This book was a continuation of that. Esperanza
gives it a try with Carlos and then the twins stop talking to her altogether
when she realizes that she’ll never be more than a friend with Carlos. These
were supposed to be her best friends in the world! Carlos I understand more,
and least for the first few months, because he was hurt, but Carla? She gets
mad that Esperanza can’t fulfill her fantasy and goes so far as to say it is
Esperanza’s fault because she went to college. I just had a hard time believing
all this, because it was basically reducing these characters’ purpose in this
story down to this one drama that did not really affect other aspects of the
story at all.
The last thing that I will touch on in
this review is Esperanza herself. Something that bugged me in the last book
showed up her too, and that would be Esperanza’s negativity. I completely
understand she did not have the easiest upbringing, but that doesn’t really redeem
for me the rudeness and complaining that Esperanza disguises as humor. It’s
prevalent throughout the book and made me like her less as a character, which
is tricky when the story hinges on you rooting on the main character.
I’m bummed because the story has
potential to be really inspiring, but it just fell flat for me. I know there
are people who have loved this book and were not bothered by the things that
bothered me, but I personally cannot recommend this book.
Zombies- as if that wasn’t enough to ruin any girl’s dream of a happily ever after.
