I recently read and enjoyed Laekan Zea Kemp’s new book An Appetite For Miracles which is a chicanx latinx YA coming of age story, told in verse, about family struggles and falling in love.

I thought it was a beautiful story about family, about the complicated relationships we might have with family, but also of the closeness and the bonds and the things that we cherish.

If you like quick reads and/or stories told in verse with an emphasis on family, then I would strongly tell you to pick this up.

Thank you to Hear Our Voices book tours, the publisher and the author for the Netgalley e-ARC and for the opportunity to read and review this book.

“𝙄 𝙢𝙖𝙠𝙚 𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙨 𝙗𝙚𝙘𝙖𝙪𝙨𝙚 𝙄 𝙠𝙣𝙤𝙬 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙨 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙣𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙛𝙚𝙘𝙩.”
-Danna

Special thanks to the author @laekanzeakemp , @hearourvoicestours and @netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this gorgeous book 🥰. I am just so so happy to be a part of this team.

An Appetite for Miracles by Laekan Zea Kemp
Genre: YA Romance
Pages Count: 313
Rate: 5⭐

My Thoughts 💭
I can't describe how stunning this book is. This is a novel that's written in poetic way which is so beautiful. The selection of poems was deep and light-hearted. I loved every single chapter and moments that are portrayed in this book. The latin culture was beautifully depicted, I loved it so much when it comes to Spanish words in this book. The writing was simple yet elegant. This book has got me smiling, puling, and grumpy at the same time. I won't say much other than that I highly recommend it to anyone. I believe it's a perfect read for anyone who wants to start reading poetry books, this one is truly a great start.

Laekan Zea Kemp has done it again! Somewhere Between Bitter and Sweet, Heartbreak Symphony, and now An Appetite for Miracles are INCREDIBLE young adult novels with beautiful writing and impactful stories.

Though this new one is a novel in verse, it accomplishes everything I loved about the author’s two previous YA titles: it made me feel seen while reading and it made me feel healed once I closed the book after the last page.

I loved the relationship between Danna and her cousin. Their bond was so sweet and I really appreciated the ways Victoria supported Danna through the toughest moments with Danna’s mother, who struggled to show Danna real love without hurting her daughter over and over. But most of all, I loved Raúl’s storyline with his mother, who returns home after ten years in prison. The tension between them as Raúl’s mother tried to glide back into her role as a parent was handled incredibly well.

I am SO appreciative of this author’s work and how authentic her characters and stories are. So many aspects of my weird and messed up childhood are reflected on the pages of this author’s books because she has dedicated herself to sharing deeply meaningful and powerful stories, stories that need to be told more and read more.

Tour Stop: #AnAppetite ForMiracles
Did you know April was #NationalPoetryMonth? Need ideas? An Appetite For Miracles written by Chicana author @LaekanZeaKemp is perfect because it is beautifully written in verse. The story is told in alternating POV's. Raul struggles with the loneliness of growing up with an incarcerated mother, and then the different loneliness that comes with readjusting to her release and rejoining their worlds together. It makes his relationship with God complex as his uncle is a pastor. Danna is dealing with trying to keep her grandfather, who has dementia, present by trying to recreate his favorite foods. She also has a complex relationship with her mother, who is most definitely abusive and emotionally stunted. Raul and Danna have one of the cutest cute-meet stories I've read in a while. It tackled hard themes in such a way that's only possible with poetry. Generational trauma, dementia, incarceration of a parent, body shaming, religious reconstruction, emotional abuse from a parent, and loss of a grandparent all entwined with love.
So, I'd call this a 'café con pan dulce comfort read, not only because it felt like an ode to Latine food, but also because despite the hard topics the love was the "sweetest bite." The love between Danna and her grandfather, and her and her father, the love and friendship between cousins, and between Raul and his uncle, healthy blossoming love between teens, self-love and body positivity, and even the love from both of their complex mothers. This book had the perfect ingredients to make it an April spring read, with a dessert on the side. Thank you @hearourvoices and @littlebrown for the ARC.
#HOVTours #HOV #HearOurVoices #HearOurVoicesTour #LaekanZeaKemp #YoungAdult #YoungAdultB# LatinxBookstagram #LatinxBookstagrammer #RepresentationMatters
#DiversifyBookstagram

An Appetite for Miracles 🍽✨️🎸

Told in verse, we follow two teens, Danna Mendoza Villareal and Raul Santos, who crosses paths. Sparks arouse and they begin to heal each other from their scars and bruises. 🩷

Danna's grandpa is losing memories and she continuously tries to bring him back to the present with the delicious foods he once reviewed through his worldly travels although she herself has a love-hate relationship with it because of her relationship with her mother. 🌐

Raul's mom was recently released after being wrongly incarcerated 2 years ago because of her then boyfriend. Playing guitar with his pastor uncle for the elderly is how he feels a sense of purpose, especially when his mom isn't who he remembered. 🎶

I would urge you to read this intricate tale with carefully peeled back pages if you enjoy:

📖 Books written in Verse (There's something extra special about this form.)
🎶 Music and its power to heal (Religious and otherwise.)
🥐 Food as a love language (My mouth was drooling and belly grumbling throughout!)
❤️ Family drama - good and bad (The parent-child relationships were too relatable!)
🙏 Prayer, Faith and Miracles (They don't work without common sense haha.)
👧 Body Confidence (I gained confidence in myself through Danna's narrative.)

Many sincere thanks to @hearourvoicestours and @laekanzeakemp for the opportunity to receive an advanced e-ARC in touring this beauty. 😍

I knew this was a 5 star book a few pages into reading it. I’m so excited to incorporate this into my students’ learning next year and to make this available in my classroom library. Truly beautiful poetry and story!

My starred review in School Library Journal:
Gr 8 Up–Sixteen-year-old Danna is trying desperately to cope with her grandpa’s advancing dementia. Using her deceased grandmother Aurora’s recipes and detailed reviews Grandpa wrote about foods special to him, she hopes to evoke his memories. While Danna’s father supports this, her mother, Raquel, is highly critical of Danna’s body and what goes in it. Meanwhile, Raúl’s mother has just been released after two years in prison, pressuring him about his schoolwork without awareness of the emotional toll her absence has created for her son. He leans into playing his guitar as a source of comfort. Both teens just long to be enough to make their mothers proud. They meet when Raúl plays music for Danna’s grandpa as part of music therapy treatment, and instantly connect as teens facing family traumas. This verse novel is told in alternating perspectives of the two teens, with their Mexican American culture being woven into the poetry through delectable food descriptions and music. While these senses are used in attempt to capture the past and ignite more lucid moments with Grandpa, readers also gain insight into Danna and Raúl’s grief and the tenderness between them. While they are both facing the loss of an important family member, they search for hope and forgiveness as ways to reclaim their stories both past and present. Themes include dementia, incarcerated parent, body shaming, physical violence, references to sexual assault, and death of grandparent.VERDICT A captivating and emotional coming-of-age tale that harmonizes magnificently in verse.

Laekan Zea Kemp is not a new to me author. Because of this, I knew I was going to read something that was perfection. I was not disappointed.

This is a book written in verse and I loved it! Each verse/poem was written beautifully. The love story between Raúl and Danna is exactly like a love song. They are both going through a lot with a family member they love and they are helping one another through that time. With each word written, you could feel all emotions. You feel the pain, the love, the sadness, the happiness, the feeling of being lost, the feeling of being found.

This is an amazing fast read that I highly recommend!

Before I even started reading, this book checked three boxes of things I love: YA, novel in verse, and alternating perspectives.

And then I got into Danna and Raúl’s stories, and my heart was fully invested and I couldn’t put the book down.

There are so many things about Danna and Raúl’s stories for readers to relate to:
- Watching a grandparent slip away to Alzheimer’s/dementia
- The healing power of food and music (and how food and music relate deeply to memories)
- Falling in love
- Parental trauma and its impact on children
- The aftermath of wrongful incarceration and how difficult it is to feel safe again in the world
- How harmful it is for a mother to push diet culture on her child
- The importance of knowing that there is always more to the story than you can see

I promise you will find yourself as invested in Danna and Raúl’s stories as I did. They are characters who are easy to root for and who will stay with me for a while after closing the book.

I wanted to love this book so badly but sadly i didn’t. I couldn't get into the story, The MC’s were so bland and I couldn't root for them.

Laekan Zea Kemp is a hands down no questions asked auto buy author.

This book in verse is hauntingly beautiful. Experience grief, new beginnings, struggles, and all the emotions in between with Danna and Raul. You’ll be constantly somewhere between heart wrenching and warming this entire book.

If you need a book with all the feels this is your book!

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for a chance to read and review this story.

Laekan Zea Kemp has written some of my favorite books ever. Her debut, Somewhere Between Bitter & Sweet, was absolutely incredible. And with An Appetite for Miracles, she has returned to remind readers just how skilled she is at her craft. Storytelling is her superpower.

I love Kemp's writing because it envelops me in a nostalgia for my culture. As a Mexican-American who sometimes feels completely isolated from their culture while living in the United States, Kemp's representation and stories make me very nostalgic and reminiscent of my favorite parts of Mexican culture. An Appetite for Miracles goes one step further, and not only makes me miss my grandparents who have passed (and reminds me of my abuelita who is currently suffering from advanced dementia), but also mirrors much of my own extremely difficult relationship with my immigrant mother, who, like Danna's mother, don't know how to love their children without hurting them in the process.

This novel-in-verse is well-written - it captures so much raw emotion and honest reflection in poetic form, and Kemp effortlessly crafts two relatable characters whose experiences and thoughts are very realistic for teens struggling with the weight of being true to themselves while appeasing the adults in their lives.

Danna's character reminded me so much of my teen self, so reading this story cover-to-cover felt like a therapy session and a moment of healing from my inner child, all in one. Her love for food, her struggles with her self esteem and image; the distorted, complicated relationship with her mother - I saw myself in it all. But especially, her love for her abuelo, and her fear and pain surrounding his dementia and losing him forever.

Now, I don't want to get too personal and deep about it, but I also want to be honest. My personal vendetta against dementia is that it has robbed me of the chance to know my abuelita. It feels like a personal attack against me, since I lost my paternal abuelito when I was nine years old, and only saw my maternal grandparents twice in my lifetime before they both passed away during university. My paternal abuelita's dementia began to advance when I was in high school, and now, she remembers nothing.

I never got a chance to hear stories about her life; stories about my father, my uncles and aunts when they were growing up. I never got to ask her her favorite color, or her favorite food. Or about her own family. Her childhood. I never got the chance to bond with her before I lost her. And it hurts too much to grieve a person who is still here. And yet, that's what dementia does. It steals loved ones away and forces people to grieve an unexpected loss. And it really, really hurts.

Raul's character was really great. I connected with him almost immediately upon meeting him, and I understood a lot of what he was feeling and struggling with. Feeling lost, like there is no reason to continue on with the day to day. And especially the feeling of not recognizing your own parent, and struggling to understand what changed, and why it feels so much like it's all your fault.

Raul and Danna's relationships with God and their faith was refreshing to see - I appreciated their individual reflections about faith. How their beliefs and ways of practicing need only matter to them, and just because others don't understand their relationship with God, doesn't mean it's not meaningful or fulfilling.

Danna and Raul's relationship, and the way each of them relies on the other throughout the story, was nicely done. I think it was an accurate portrayal of most teen relationships - instalove, head over heels obsessed. And yet, their blossoming romance, and friendship, was healthy and supportive. Both of them supported the other in the best way they could, even when they were hurting too.

Overall, this story broke me apart and healed me at the same time. I cannot thank Laekan enough for writing these painfully beautiful stories that make me, and many other readers, feel seen and understood in a way no one else will.

This YA Novel in Verse was both heart wrenching and heart warming in all the best ways! I wasn’t quite ready to be done with these characters once I reached the last page. This story will stay with me.

In An Appetite For Miracles, we are introduced to two young Latinx teens Danna and Raúl, who are both trying to heal from past trauma and pain. Danna, who is dealing with an emotionally abusive mother and navigating watching her beloved grandfather succumb to his dementia diagnosis, finds herself escaping into the kitchen as she searches for answers through her cooking and food. Similarly, Raúl has his music that helps him as he navigates trying to deal with having his mother reenter his life after she gets out of prison. As his uncle states, “this is how he prays”, referring to him getting lost in his music. As they work together to try and heal her grandfather they discover that they are actually healing themselves.

I loved the flow and the ease of this novel. The characters and their trauma were believable and moving. I especially loved all the Latinx culture on display throughout as well as the representation. I feel in a lot of families there is a stigma surrounding expectations of perfection mothers often harbor for their daughters. Kemp did a fantastic job of reflecting this in Danna’s relationship with her mother and her body. It was hard to read at times when her mother’s voice would creep into Danna’s head and negative thoughts about her body would take over, but Kemp’s writing highlighted this trauma heartbreakingly. “Arguing over this body that won’t fit into the keyhole that unlocks my mother’s love.”

This is a wonderful book that I can’t recommend enough. But be warned: you will be left with a tear or two, hope, and an appetite for miracles and delicious food!!

Amazing. What a beautiful book written in verse with alternatives pov from Danna and Raul beautiful intertwined together. About love, loss, and even grief.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for a honest review.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC of this novel. 4/5 stars.

I love verse novels. I just, I absolutely love them. The depth they pose in so little words always astounds me, and this novel was no different. Told with two POVs - Danna and Raul -- a story is woven of grief and loss and hope and food and miracles and the dynamic spark between the characters when they meet. Both Danna and Raul have their own struggles, but they find peace with one another while still growing on their own. I really enjoyed both stories. Danna's was hard to read at times with her mother and their borderline emotionally abusive relationship, along with the discussions of weight and food. Raul's story focuses on the return of his mother from prison who ends up being a completely different person. Danna's story also brings them together, as much of her story is about her trying to jog her grandfather's memories -- who has dementia -- and Raul provides music therapy.

Overall, I really enjoyed this. I wish there was more development of the characters together, and I also feel like some parts of the story were dropped (like...did I miss them going on summer vacation?? what happened to school?) but it was really good. And it made me cry.

An Appetite for Miracles by Laekan Zea Kemp is a heart-warming and heart-wrenching novel-in-verse that follows the stories of two teens, Danna and Raúl, as they navigate through their personal struggles and past traumas. Danna is trying to find a way to help her grandfather remember his past, while struggling with her complicated relationship with her mother. Raúl has been lost since his mother was wrongly incarcerated, but when she unexpectedly returns to his life, he doesn't know how to react.

When Danna and Raúl meet, they find solace in each other's company and decide to work together to heal Danna's grandfather and themselves. Their love of music and food brings them closer together as they explore their pasts, and the reader is taken on an emotional journey that will make them feel a range of emotions.

The novel is beautifully written, with the verse adding to the emotional impact of the story. The characters are well-developed, and the reader can't help but feel invested in their lives and their struggles. The book also touches on important themes such as family, forgiveness, and the power of love and connection.

Overall, An Appetite for Miracles is a poignant and touching story that will leave readers with a renewed appreciation for the healing power of love and the importance of human connections. Fans of Elizabeth Acevedo and Nicola Yoon will especially enjoy this book.

I couldn't get into the story, Danna and Raul seemed like bland characters and I couldn't root for their romance as it was very instant and I strongly dislike insta love. Also the random use of Spanish words here and there drove me insane and I'm saying this as a native Spanish speaker.

An Appetite for Miracles is tender, emotional, and introspective. It's a story about the ones we love which drift away from us. We try to keep them close to us, but fate, circumstances, and time let them float away. The question is just how do we bridge that distance. How do we figure out how to reconcile, to come together, to have moments fo recognition. An Appetite for Miracles is a love letter to family and food. To all the every day miracles and the ones that move mountains, have rippling echoes.

An impactful novel-in-verse that will have you both laughing and in tears. Kemp tells the intertwined stories of Danna and Raul, both living through tough times. Exploring love and loss, An Appetite for Miracles will leave your heart full and remind you that you are not alone.

This gorgeous novel in verse had me going back and rereading sentences because of how beautiful they are. The moving relationship between the main characters as well as the relationships of the main characters with their families will resonate with young readers. Highly recommend.