Thirty Talks Weird Love, by Alessandra Narváez Varela, for Timeslip Tuesday

Thirty Talks Weird Love, by Alessandra Narváez Varela (January 1st 2021 by Cinco Puntos Press), is a stunning book, combining a vividly real slice of life story of a girl on the brink of suicide with time travel, set in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico in the 1990s, when girls  are being murdered with horrible, terrifying regularity.

Thirteen-year-old Anamaria is academically driven, and has messed up being a friend.  Lonely and stressed, and scared by the terror stalking her city, she's at a breaking point.  Though her parents love her and care about her well-being, they have no idea how bad things are getting.  There is someone who knows, though--Anamaria's thirty-year-old self, who come back to get her younger self through this bad time.

Anamaria is understandably unwelcoming, and doesn't want to hear what this stranger tries to tell her.  But "Thirty" is able to nudge her, changing enough of the time line to make things better for her past self, but failing in the other task she had travelled through time to set right.

Though this is a  hybrid verse/paragarph novel, and there aren't lots and lots of words, Varela manages to convey an astoundingly vivid and rich picture of Anamaria's thoughts, her daily life, and her experiences at school.  I'm not sure I've ever used the word "masterful" in a review before, but I shall do so now--this is a masterful story.  It twists the heart something fierce.

The time travel part is strange, and never explained (which is a tad frustrating), but very interesting.  Thirty is not a dea ex machina, but she is able to push in just the right places to get Anamaria on a healthier path--mostly, and most importantly for young depressed readers, by getting her to tell her parents that she is depressed and needs help.   It was satisfying, as a Time Travel pureist, to read in the epilogue that briefly lays out what happens to Anamaria in the following years, that she doesn't in fact time travel again--her other self had changed enough so this was no longer necessary.

One of the things that made this such a believable book is that Anamaria thinks in both English and Spanish, and so there is considerable untranslated Spanish in the text.  I don't speak Spanish, but context and generic familiarity were enough to understand what was being said.  And, on the subject of this being clearly a Mexican book, one of the things that made it a viscerally appealing reading experience was all the delicious food!  Though Anamaria is prone to unhealthy comfort eating (so relatable), food is still integral to her loving relationship with her parents (who have a small restaurant)  and with the coffee shop owner next door, a loving uncle figure.

The title, "Thirty Talks Weird Love," refers to Thirty's main message that Anamaria must find a way to love herself, but it's not heavy handed or preachy.  I can imagine many 11-14 year-olds really seeing themselves in this one, and quite possibly being not just entertained by a good story, well told, but helped to be more compassionate to themselves and to others.  

The book is being marketed as YA, but I do think it counts as upper middle grade just as much--a 13-year-old with friendship drama is more middle grade to me than a 14-year-old with relationship drama would be.

Highly recommended.

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher