I didn't realize how much I was gonna enjoy this book.
The plot is definitely sad and melancholic, there are lots of themes mentioned that can be triggering for a lot of people. And yet the writing is somehow hopeful?
I'm not sure how this is possible, but I ended up feeling more positive than negative after reading this. And I felt I really needed that.
In short, this is a high school drama peppered with lots of additional things like grief, environmental decline, space exploration, class etc.
The book reads a bit like a diary with lots of internal monologue, but it also doesn't get boring. Things are constantly happening and even if they seem mundane they are still meaningful. It was also nice to have a hopeful protagonist. I think through it all, the main character held onto her hope and that really touched me. Actually, quite a few things in this book have stirred up emotions in me.

I was expecting this to be more sci fi or climate fiction and instead it was more of a family drama.

A coming of age story about grief and climate change told through a mix of poetic prose and teenage nihilism in a time of upheaval. As ecosystems collapse around us, the kind of future presented in This is The Year becomes more and more familiar, constantly becoming less tomorrow and more today. Juli is a teenage poet mourning the death of her twin sister Ofelia as she goes into senior year.

Juli struggles with immense feelings of helplessness as she watches her mother rot away in grief, watches her friends try and fail to reach her, watching natural disasters ravage the earth and her community while the rich and powerful look away and pitiless corporations rule over it all.

Her solace is poetry, but even her writing skills don't entice her to care about the future - writing programs, college, life, all of it has lost its luster for her. Her apathy is contrasted by the fierce love she has for life, for the earth and nature, the animals and habitats she's watching be devastated. As Juli makes an unexpected new friend and struggles to reconnect with old ones, she's forced to juggle her priorities, emotions, and grief and decide whether she actually, truly, thinks life and the planet earth are worth protecting.

There's also a dash of beachfront cleanup, AI reality show hosts, astronaut training, and roller derby!

I would be lying if I said Gloria Muñoz didn't scare me a little with this one. But the overall message is one of hope and responsibility, of how worthy the planet is of our fighting for it and attempting to protect it.

The writing is quick and cuts to the point while still offering so many rich details and such a compelling and vivid setting. A glimpse of our lives fifteen minutes into the future, one that is both familiar and scarily topical yet still feels slightly fantastical in the best way. There's no telling whether any one of us can have an impact or what it will be, but this is a book about how it's so important we keep trying, how we aren't suffering alone even when we feel isolated, how community and devotion are worth so much more than corporate growth or obedience to a system that has actually failed to prove itself again and again yet is upheld by vulgar amounts of ill-gained wealth garnered at our own expense and sold back to us as a lifestyle or a salvation.

This Is The Year is a beautiful, melancholy, vibrant tale rich with the author's clear love for our planet and its species, with a sweet, believable teen romance, a futuristic flourish, and a lot of worthwhile musings on the climate, our future trajectory, and what it means to claim your own path instead of being pushed around by the chaos of the world.

Thank you so much to NetGalley for the chance to read an early copy, I absolutely adore this book and can't recommend this one enough for LGBT readers, those who love a coming of age story, those who loved the book Whip It by Shauna Cross, and those who care about environmentalism and conservation work.

*I received an ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thanks for the free book.*

"This is the Year" is a fascinating YA dystopia with a character driven story that touches on gender, class, race and humanity's fate at large. Our protagonist has lost her sister in a hit and run, she is struggling to cope with her daily life and school. When she aces a test and is invited to become part of a new, privately funded space programme, everything might change. But can you trust the promises of a somehow sus coperation whose promises sound too good to be true?

I was slightly unhappy with the ending but was overall intrigued by the world building. Can recommend the book. 4 stars

This one really should have done it for me (I love a novel in verse -- especially if it's for a younger audience), but it just didn't hit for me. I think I just wasn't in the right headspace when reading it so it just wasn't for me at the time of reading it.

This was a good story about grief and moving on but it took me a little time to really get into the story and I had to pause it before starting again. But it did end up gripping me. The characters were pretty layered and I enjoyed getting to know them. The main character wasn't exactly my favorite but she was an interesting character.
However, I have to admit that it's been a month since I read this and I don't remember much. It didn't really make an impression but this could be on me.
Overall, it was an interesting and layered read and I would read more books by this author.

This one dragged on and on for me. The synopsis sounded great, but there wasn't much poetry. It seemed like just stream of consciousness writing and I grew bored quickly. The ending was the best part, for more than one reason.

After losing her sister Julieta feels lost. As she navigates life after her her sister she gets made and offer to tempting to refuse! This book tackles difficult topics including Grief and the impending doom of earth! This book was written beautifully and the ending left me feeling motivated to be the change.

dnf at 18% because what are we doing? I fear there is no plot, only 1 poem so far, and the leader of NASP (NASA) is named Morningstar, like really? I had high hopes for this one too but yikes

I was very excited to read. This is the Year by Gloria Munoz. It sounded like a really interesting take on a coming-of-age novel and I was really curious about the component of this book being set in the near future in the climate impact element of this book, I did not realize how much of the emphasis would be on morning her twin sister and this space program Ultimately, I am not a person who enjoys stream of consciousness writing so the story did not really work for me, but as I read it, I could see how this could really work for a teenager or someone who is more in the age range of the intended audience. I still very grateful to Holiday House books, and NetGalley for granting me in advance reader copy, and I think I would recommend it under specific circumstances, but it wasn’t a top breed for me.

DNF p49

I thought this would be exactly my kind of book and was looking forward to reading it, but every time id open it, I would stall out. This is definitely a case of me and not the book because I liked the way the story was being told and I was curious to see how things played out, but I just could not get it to hold my attention. I may try this again at a later date, but for now This Is the Year just isn’t for me.

This coming-of-age story centers on Juli, a young woman uncertain about her post-high school future, struggling with grief after a family tragedy and the challenges of a world eroding due to climate change. While the plot was moving and engaging, told through narrative and poetry, reflective of Juli's passion for writing. What I found most compelling was the vivid portrayal of life amid climate chaos and systemic inequities – a vision of the future that feels very plausible. It certainly has a dystopian tone, yet it remains thoughtfully hopeful by highlighting the power of community and love, especially in the face of unimaginable loss. I didn’t know what to expect, but I was pleasantly pleased.

This Is the Year is a daring experiment of combining prose and verse into a story about dealing with grief and appreciating little things. It tackles futuristic problems from climate change, endangered species, to space travel, that mingle with classic YA problems such as relationship with family, friends, and oneself. The cover is gorgeous, and the color palette fits the story inside. It also centers diverse characters especially Puerto Rican community.

The prose and verse are connecting to each other, but I enjoyed the verse part most. Although it looks like it's written in second person, it's clearly in first person (Juli) who's talking to her sister (Ofe) and not to us the reader. I can't quite pinpoint what deters me from really get what this novel is about initially, because it takes quite long until the space cadet program is introduced, and for involving a multimillion project like flying students to the space, the ending is too easy. Plus Juli seems to get through the program in a breeze (exceptional score, top of her class, praises from others) without showing she's (or used to be) athletic and academically achieved before. It's as if the space travel itself is entirely a metaphor. And it didn't really match the realistic near-future portrayal that carries the atmosphere of this book.

I am also fifty-fifty with the believability of the future here. Some things confuse me like why there are no waterproof eyeliner and mascara (is it to picture how hot Earth is? But even today our beauty products are far superior than a decade ago), why manatees can go extinct (we already have genetic engineering plan about Dodo birds and alike today), 12G signal (if it's as far as version 12, it may as well change the name), and mentions of vintage slangs (this one is interesting though, because it implies that slangs cycle back like fashion trends. Lit is considered vintage while rad and adorbs are in). But I liked that it hints on political climate prediction and how teenagers are becoming more aware of the situation, and more careful to decide.

This book offers a unique experience that's different from other prose-poem or prose-verse YA novels. Even though it didn't blow my mind, I'm glad to see many representation and environmental concerns—something that I feel becoming less and less mainstream—here so I hope it helps raise more attention to young adult readers too.

Juli's lost her sister, and she is really struggling. She's sort of shut herself out from the world, including her old pals. And when her school hosts a company planning to send new graduates into space, Juli is ready to GTFO of the whole planet.

It's set in a near future, we've gone and messed up Earth even more than we already have, to the surprise of no one. So this group is supposed to be helping to build a new colony on the Moon- basically to replace a dying Earth, as it were. There are some red flags, but Juli cares zero percent- she just wants to escape her life and the loss of her sister. Only, turns out you cannot escape grief. She also finds herself navigating relationships, both old and new, and trying to figure out how these relationships work outside of her sister's orbit.

It's a really lovely story, obviously emotional, but also uplifting because Juli is still putting one foot in front of the other. The ending was... well, it was a little silly? But I couldn't really fault it too much, because the book as a whole was really quite good. I enjoyed Juli picking up the pieces, and learning so much about herself and her friends along the way.

Bottom Line: A lovely story about a young woman figuring out how to keep going after an unimaginable loss.

DNF at 23%

I'm bored. This is not delivering anything different from what I would expect from the plot. A girl trying to make her way out of town after losing her sister. It doesn't have the compelling characterization that I expect from the YA genre which usually keeps me interested. I don't care about anything that's happening or will happen going forward

The end was good—the rest I found rather mid. About two-thirds in, I wrote this rant, and although the end did make up for a few things, my opinions still stand.

First of all, in this book, the earth is dying. But it barely shapes the setting. Sometimes they mention that it is way too hot outside, or they mention yet another animal that has gone extinct. But I missed the effects of these things. For example, how do people navigate the world when it's too hot to be outside? I barely noticed a difference from our world.

Juli, the main character is described as someone who cares a lot about the planet. Yet, she is willing to work for a company that only escapes the problem instead of fixing it. (Alright, she does have her reasons)

That aside, she is enlisted in this cool space program where only the best will pass. But there is so little of that shown in the book. There are a few chapters that describe the tasks she has to do, but then the next chapter is just a contemporary high school drama.

That's just a few of the things. The book lacks structure and connection between the sub-plots. It's just a few stories in a trenchcoat [end rant]

Thank you NetGalley and Holiday House for giving me access to an e-arc for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

This Is The Year is a lot of things. Written in prose and verse, it tackles climate change, grief, and self-discovery. Juli, the main character, talks to us as if we were her deceased twin sister. It’s personal, the way the story is narrated to the reader. We delve into the grief, anger, trauma, and healing right alongside her.

I read this during New Year’s Eve and I think it was fitting. Set in a future where the state of the environment is in shambles, Juli talks to us of extinction of species, fast fashion, and global warming—among others. A good chunk of the story is Juli training to be sent off to the Moon so, in any case, humans can transfer there for sanctuary due to the damage Earth has sustained. It’s a necessary and urgent reminder of the state of our current climate; it’s a glimpse of the very possible future we might be facing a few years down the line.

Thank you to Netgalley and Holiday House for the ARC! :>

This genre-defying YA story told in a mixture of prose and verse, sees a young Florida teen grieving the death of her twin and feeling hopeless in light of the impeding climate disaster. A chance to participate in a pilot project aimed at sending people to space, has her rekindling some home, sparking environmentalist activism and also falling in love along the way. I loved this and am sure many teens and young readers will too! Relatable, emotional and extremely relevant to the times we live in now! Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital copy in exchange for my honest review!

"I know I’m so dramática trudging through this swampland in crushed velvet and combat boots like I’m on the set of Nosferatu with sweat streams in every crease and liner lakes around my eyes, but is there anything more gothic than Spanish moss, dried palmettos, and cicadas petrified and screaming all at once into the humid night?"

Taken from Juli's journal 📝
Reasons to leave Earth: 🌏👩‍🚀🚀
1. I could buy Mom a house.
2. TORNADOS.
3. in outer space, no one will know me as the girl with the dead sister.
4. HUMANS ARE EVIL AND UGLY.
(She listed a total of 16 and a few reasons to stay) 😹

JULIETA VILLARREAL is a graduating student and is going through grief, trauma and existential dread after the death of her twin sister Ofelia. She is an aspiring writer and journaling is her form of catharsis and also attending sessions with her psychiatrist.
She was approached by a Cometa agent named Audra Morningstar at her workplace and tried to scout her to join training to become a Cometa ranger. She was informed that at NASP they pay New American Ranger at least twice the federal minimum wage to start. They offer tuition reimbursement programs and monthly stipends for family members who might need assistance.
She did a little research of her own and she found out that agent Morningstar wasn’t lying: all Cometa Agents are basically set for life—a decent salary, paid college tuition, guaranteed housing, and if you agree to fulfill two more service missions, you get a Cometa Plus stipend until you die. It’s a nice deal. She could move her mother away from the shoreline and into a new place, an actual house. If she leaves the planet, it's going to be a win-win situation. Cometa training lasts only a few weeks. Statistically, only a few of the trainees from the southeast will make it through, and then only three will be picked for the program. She's determined to be one of the three. Is it too good or too sci-fi? What could possibly go wrong?

I forgot that I even requested for this novel for it was approved a bit late. The coverart is cute and so is the story. This dazzling YA cli-fi written in prose and verse and is not annoying for a YA novel and the MC is very relatable. I like that it is mostly read as a journal. I didn't mind that this only has one POV which I often find boring or tedious. This is a unique and interesting read with topics about global warming, dealing with grief and learning how to enjoy life again.

My thanks to Holiday House / Peachtree / Pixel+Ink for providing an early copy. I received an arc for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.🖤
Expected publication date: Jan. 7, 2025

Overall, I enjoyed this! I sometimes got confused because it kind of reads like an edited stream of consciousness; it has no chapters or page splits. I think this is a book that would be great to read in audio form. I'd consider this a slice of life book, where nothing much happens and it's all vibes/feelings, no true plot. Julieta (Juli) is still processing the grief after losing her twin sister, Ofelia (Ofe). The book is written in first person, BUT Juli is writing to Ofe, so there are many instances of "you" in the narrative. I'm not sure exactly what year it all takes place, but the world is futuristic yet still recognizable. Climate change has ravaged the planet (even more so than now). Extreme weather, really hot temperatures, endangered species becoming extinct, all the rich people gentrifying the inner city and forcing the inner city people out towards the beaches where the climate is more extreme. Oh, and AI becoming more mainstream. I loved reading about the reality TV dating shows with AI and humans, because that would totally be a thing. Most of all, though, I liked seeing Juli come back to her friends and discover her passions after a year of isolation.

Also can we just all bow down to the cover artist because that cover? She is gorgggg.

Thanks to the publisher for providing an advanced copy of this book!