With the Fire on High

Super-award winning author Elizabeth Acevedo is back with her sophomore novel, With the Fire on High, and it definitely lives up to the hype! This novel is in prose instead of verse but it’s still got the diverse flair and beautiful emotion we know and love.

RELATED: My review of The Poet X

When Emoni Santiago got pregnant her freshman year of high school, no one expected her to make it to her senior year, but she has, with the help of the grandmother who raised her and her daughter Emma’s father. But senior year is going to take it’s toll on her. Emoni’s got decisions to make about college, her future in culinary arts, a new elective being offered, and a new boy in town. But Emoni focuses on her daughter and her family and that’s it. She doesn’t have time for things that are going to throw her life into turmoil, but she can’t turn away from her love for cooking if it means a new future for her and her daughter.

RELATED: 2019 ALA Award Winners

Full of complicated familial relationships, a surprisingly uplifting story about teen pregnancy, young love, study abroad opportunities, and so much food, this book packs a punch. It didn’t leave me dry-heaving like The Poet X, but I liked it just as much. I felt like I knew Emoni, the story moved along at a good pace, and I loved all the side characters, like ‘Buela, Malachi, the Chef, etc.

If you like food and atypical high school stories, you need to read this book.

With The Fire On High is on sale May 7th, 2019.