A college sent this to me for freshman seminar. I felt obligated to read it, even though I didn't go to that school this year, but I almost didn't finish it.

How this book won such a prestigious award is beyond me. The reader knows what's generally going to happen from the title, and the outcome is pretty obvious from the start. The details (which are the only reason I kept reading) are mostly shrouded in Spanish slang. I don't read next to a computer, so looking the phrases up was impractical, and I couldn't understand a large chunk of the prose because of that fact.

Add to that the narrators who all speak in the same tone, and that's a recipe for confusion. I got to a "part" break and read a page and a half before I realized the narrator and subject had changed.

I honestly don't know how I managed to push myself through the book. I haven't hated a book this much since I had to read [b:Beloved|6149|Beloved|Toni Morrison|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165555299s/6149.jpg|736076] in high school.