Dear Readers,

today’s review will be about a new favorite book of mine. I saw it on bookstagram, in a post about young adult books recommended for black history month. After reading the description I decided nearly instantly to buy it. Now, after a bit more than a week reading this incredible piece, it became one of my favorite books, I like it even better than Every Day by David Levithan. I’m talking about Clap When You Land, a novel-in-verse, written by National Book Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Acevedo.

• 

• 

The only tough decision I connect with that novel, is which version I should buy. I really like the cover of the hard-cover book, but I often find paperbacks more comfortable. Also, they’re cheaper (don’t get me wrong, I like to support authors, but I don’t have that much money to spend on books every month, so I think that’s a fair compromise). After all, both covers show the main characters somehow divided and are beautifully designed. Both the hardcover’s drawn style and the paperback’s digital designed cover-images are amazing and in it’s simplicity contrary to the highly emotional story.

Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo is about Camino, a young girl living in the Dominican Republic. Her father visits her every summer, but this year everything is different, just because of one event: On the day when his plane is supposed to land, Camino meets crowds of crying people when she arrives at the airport. The plane crashed. But she’s not the only girl who mourns for her father: Yahaira, living in New York, is told in the principal’s office that her father, her hero, died in a plane crash on the flight he takes every year in the summer to the Dominican Republik. Both girls need to learn the secrets their father had. They need to get along in a new, forever altered reality. But maybe there is hope to not be alone with this grief anymore. Maybe there is hope in finding a sister and in fighting for their dreams.

Personally, I love reading poetry and novels, so this novel-in-verse was a perfect mixture. Honestly, it was beautifully written without being overwhelming poetry-metaphor-language, if you know what I mean. The style supported the plot and the emotions perfectly well. It was written from two perspectives, Camino’s and Yahaira’s. I read some reviews by people, who said the characters have been to similar to tell them apart, but I totally disagree. Even when the name wasn’t written above the part anymore, I could instantly say, who tells the story at that point because everything was written logically all the time and I found those two characters very different. Also, the novel addresses issues, I think people should talk more about. Men, who think girls are their property, for instance. Clap When You Land contains LGBTQ+ content as well, but without making a fuss about it and I love it this way (of course I know that’s definitely not the norm, even in modern society, and it should be talked about more in order to get tolerated on a larger scale, but I wish it could be that easy). In this story it’s just normal and not really a problem, being gay and I think this is the way it should be: people love people, let them love each other, why does the gender matter?

So all in all, I really loved reading this book and will never regret buying it. As soon as I finish some other books on my current reading list, I’m gonna read „Poet X“ or „With The Fire On High“ by Elizabeth Acevedo. I’m looking forward to it!

I hope you’re well!

Yours,
Aly