please be silent in the stacks...

8.18.25 - book review

How Moon Fuentez Fell in Love with the Universe by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland

Moon Fuentez is a deeply lovable character from the get go. Amazingly, this book is able to capture little moments of teen awkwardness and miscommunication and make it real rather than agonizing and a little too unbelievable. Instead of leaning into drunken confessions or abrupt offense, the things that set characters off and into action feel suble and plausible. Though the characters are teens who do have a particilar slang, it is not used too much and therefore dating the story. It feels like it would actually remain quite timeless and be something I could recommend to a niece in fifteen years.

Reading the first few chapters, I was a bit worried the prose would use a bit too many cliche poetics, but I was rather suprised the poetics were kept to a mimimum and lent very well to the story and with wraping up chapter's themes. The stories theme surrounding sex and religious thought on abstinence was also very refreshing. I have never read the words as a teen in a story that when a character was being intimate she "never felt closer to God." Talk about deconstructing religious purity trauma. This story is for anyone. Anyone who felt like the lesser sibling. Anyone with a narcisstic mother. Anyone who lost both parents somehow. Anyone who felt ashamed for their body as it is or their body being intimate. Anyone who is creative and wanted more for themselves so much, they could'nt keep it quiet, even if it meant losing family. I'll leave you with a quote that about sums it all up for you.

"Mom loved it in the show Jane the Virgin when Jane's abuela crumples up a white flower and says that's what happens when a girl has sex. "She's right," Mom said. "A woman who does it turns brown and ugly like that flower. You can't ever be beautiful again, not to any man's eyes, not even Jesus's."

Mom and Jane's abuela forgot something about flowers, though. The blooms become seeds. And eventually a whole new plant, producing a whole new bouquet of fresh, white flowers. With each breath, I am now. I'm a seed. I'm a flower, and then I'm a seed again.

And that's exactly how God made it work."