Tracy Badua - This Is Not A Personal Statement
4⭐
Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Young Adult, Fiction
Pages: 360
Format: Paperback Proof
Publisher: Harper360YA, Harper360, Quil Tree Books
Date Published: 16th February 2023
Huge thank you to Harper360YA, Harper360 for sending me a copy of this book to read and review.
Book Blurb:
An incisive, relatable tale of acceptance, self-discovery, and the infinite possibilities that await when we embrace our imperfections.
As the youngest graduating senior at her hypercompetitive high school, Perla Perez is certain all the late nights, social isolation, and crushing stress will be worth it when she gets into the college of her (and her parents’) dreams: Delmont University.
Then Perla doesn’t get in, and her meticulously planned future shatters. In a panic, she forges her own acceptance letter, and next thing she knows, she’s heading to Delmont for real, acceptance or not. Perla’s plan? Gather on-the-ground intel to beef up her application and reapply spring semester before she’s caught.
But as her guilty conscience grows and campus security looms large, Perla starts to wonder if her plan will really succeed, and if this dream she’s worked for her entire life is something she even wants.
My Review:
It was a very captivating and tense
read, mainly because I wanted to know what happened at the end. It was also a
very easy read, so I read this book in like a few hours.
This book follows Perla, who is a
Filipino American whose parents are very strict about her getting the best
grades at school, getting into the best university and being only on the path
of becoming a doctor. No exceptions and no distractions. She is sure that the
top University of Delmont is her next step. She is also 100% sure she will get
in. However, Perla doesn’t get in and in the spur of the moment, she doesn’t want
to disappoint her parents, she fakes her own admission letter into Delmont. No
other Universities accepted her too, so Perla decides that she needs to fake
her way into Delmont for just a few months until she can reapply for the next
semester. All the lies, including forging papers, and scholarships, squatting
in different and empty dorm rooms, living from a backpack, and enrolling into classes
she is not supposed to be in, can be exposed just with one wrong move. However,
Perla is determined not to fail and keep this a secret from everyone, including
her parents, as she doesn’t want to disappoint them. She has her seven-step
plan and she is determined to succeed this time, proving to her parents that
she is perfect and that Delmont wants her.
I love the growth of Perla throughout
this book. She comes to Delmont as a fake student with so many preconceptions
and as she makes friends and navigates university life, she realises that there
is so much more to life than good grades, money, good schools and strict
parents. She also realises how much pressure her parents were putting her under,
especially for her to be a perfect student, as well as she realised that all
she was doing was to make her parents happy. I loved how she became a young
adult just in a few months of living on her own. I also liked that she accepted
what she did wrong and agreed to accept responsibility for her actions.
I didn’t like Perla’s parents,
especially because both of them were more worried about the image that their
family and Perla puts out of everyone else. They never considered Perla’s
feelings and just cared about her success. I didn’t really agree with their
perfectionism, although I get where they were coming from, for me, they
just put too much pressure on such a young person for so many years, which had
a definitely mostly negative effect on Perla.
Parts of this book, however, did
feel very unrealistic. Like there is no way that someone can fake enrol into
university and manage to stay out of everyone’s sight for a whole semester. At
least that would definitely not be possible in any of the UK universities.
Overall: I really enjoyed this
book and it was very captivating, yet also very easy to read. I loved the fact
that parental, societal and traditional pressures were discussed in this book,
as well as this book displayed how important is to follow your own dreams in
order to be happy and not someone else’s dreams and expectations of you. A
great debut and a book with a very important message! I really hope there will
be a sequel to this as I would love to see what Perla does after the book ends.
Truly recommend!
About the Author:
Tracy Badua is a Filipino American author of books full of humor, magic, and young people with sunny hearts in a sometimes stormy world. By day, she is an attorney who works in national policy and programs, and by night, she squeezes in writing, family time, and bites of her secret candy stash. She lives in San Diego, California, with her family and photogenic Maltese.
https://www.harpercollins.com/blogs/authors/tracy-badua-202223436250
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