3.5 stars. Loved the way fantasy was woven in, La Llorona, the journey in Mexico, the Aztec history, the dynamic personalities of the five sisters. But before the fantasy started, the obvious terrible dangerous choices that were being made kept me distanced. Maybe that's just me as an adult reader? But the gorgeous writing makes it totally worth it in the end.

Odilia and her sisters are on a quest to deliver a dead man and reunite with their Abuela. Magic helps guide them and bring their family back together.

Read my review at Gator Book Chomp.

I just finished reading an advanced copy of Summer of the Mariposas - what a delicious book! Odilia is brave, smart, and certainly has her hands full with her sassy younger sisters. Readers will love the mystical journey and the great collection of personalities that are the cinco hermanitas! Bravo to Ms. Garcia McCall!

Read with my students.

I believe I would have loved Summer of the Mariposas if I was younger. It has every element I used to love—most of them I still do—, it is nice and quick and I would've devoured if I wasn't in a kind of reading slump. I am not younger, though, and I didn't love it. Don't get me wrong, I didn't hate it, either—on the contrary, liked it very much! It's just that, when I found out about this book, I was so sure it would be amazing that I am a little disappointed to see it's just... good. As usual, I'm the one to blame.

The good: The writing is beautiful. Guadalupe Garcia McCall has a way with words that charms you and makes you feel like you're part of the story she's telling. I love every bit of Aztec culture and mythology she decided to add and mix and play with here, and I have too soft of a spot for family stories, the same way I had for friendship ones when I was younger. Yeah, well...
The bad: I could've done without the Catholicism. Yeah, I know it is big in Latin cultures—boy, do I know that—, but Christian religions never fail to bother me and it couldn't have been different here. Also, I really wish

Spoiler

the hermanitas' mother hadn't found a man in the end. I always try and remind my own mother that she doesn't need a man in order to be happy, and I think this would've been a nice message for children of divorced parents who happened to read this book

. Just a thought.

Anyway, I think it's safe to recommend Summer of the Mariposas to every young reader—or everyone, really—who likes magic and fantasy, as well as ancient cultures/beliefs being used in clever and original ways in new stories.

There are a lot of things I liked about Summer of the Mariposas, and chief among them was the magical realism. The world that Odilia and her sisters find themselves in is a fascinating blend of modern life, Odyssey checkpoints, and Mexican folklore. I wish there were more YA fantasy books focusing on Central and South American cultures. (If there are any good ones, please let me know. I want to read them!) The lechuzas were delightfully terrifying, and McCall did an excellent job of redeeming the character of La Llorona. Her story was one of the two points in the book where I teared up.

For as much as I loved the magical realism, the true heart of this story is the familial bonds
between Odilia with her sisters and the sisters with their mother (and even grandmother). And despite saying that, I wish that either the book had been longer so that I could get to know the sisters better or that there had been fewer sisters to devote time to. As it stands, I don’t feel as if I got to know anyone besides Odilia very well. There was a lovely moment between Juanita and Odilia where Odilia got to subtly remind her younger sister that she doesn’t always know what’s right and that sometimes older sisters have useful things to contribute (buying sodas at the gas station, for those who have read the book), and that was a conflict I wish McCall had spent more time on. While I’m generally fond of the fire-forged-friends trope, I wish there had been slightly less physical peril with the girls and more emotional peril to draw them together.

That said, Part III: The Return, was everything I wanted it to be. If you’re familiar with the Odyssey, then you know about the ousting of the suitors. The ousting in this book involved a great deal less blood, but it was still a crowning moment of awesome. I loved how Odilia was able to reconnect with her mother and that the journey she and her sisters went on really did make their happily ever after possible—and believable.

Recommendation: Get it soon, especially if you’re interested in Mexican folklore, have a fondness for road trip stories or the Odyssey, or want to read books that focus on sisters or mother-daughter relationships. I’m going to have to check out McCall’s Under the Mesquite sometime soon to see if it is just as good.

This was written as an attempt to show the five sisters growing and learning about themselves. Unfortunately, it seemed as though they would often forget those lessons shortly later. That was a little frustrating to read. Sure, you don't have to be gracious and nice every second, but to lash out in violence over stuff (and i mean stuff, things) seems antithetical to the things you were supposed to learn. To be fair, only the twins really seems to swing back and forth on this. An interesting story, but it felt far from complete, with some characters just disappearing and that was it.

My daughter rated it 3.5 ⭐️.

I remember reading this book back in 8th grade for English class. I was not expecting to like it because English class books are boring. But it really felt like an adventure throughout this entire story. I hated that fact we had to do an 3-page-long essay on this book