This is the Year
by Gloria MuñozSetting: Florida
Genres: Science Fiction
Published on January 7, 2025
Pages: 367
Format: eARC Source: Library
"In outer space, no one will know me as the girl with the dead sister."
Seventeen-year-old self-proclaimed Goth and aspiring writer Julieta Villarreal is drowning. She’s grieving her twin sister who died in a hit-and-run, her Florida home is crumbling under the weight of climate disaster, and she isn’t sure how much longer she can stand to stay in a place that doesn’t seem to have room for her.
Then, Juli is recruited by Cometa, a private space program enlisting high-aptitude New American teens for a high-stakes mission to establish humanity’s first extraterrestrial settlement. Cometa pitches this as an opportunity for Juli to give back to her adopted country; Juli sees it as her only chance to do something big with her life.
Juli begins her training, convinced Cometa is her path to freedom. But her senior year is full of surprises, including new friendships, roller skating, and first love. And through her small but poignant acts of environmentalism, Juli begins to find hope in unexpected places. As her world collapses from the ramifications of the climate crisis, Juli must decide if she’ll carry her loss together with her community or leave it all behind.
Told in gripping prose interspersed with poems from Juli’s writing journal, this genre-bending novel explores themes of immigration, climate justice, grief, and the power of communities.
Once again I’m finding YA science fiction way more accessible and relatable than a lot of adult science fiction. This book is a great example of that.
This is the story of one girl’s senior year of high school. It is set in the future – maybe 50-100 years? It isn’t ever stated for sure. Rising sea levels and pollution have changed Florida. Now only poor people live near the coast. Tornados strike without warning and kill people in these crumbling high rises.
Juli is dealing with the death of her twin sister. She doesn’t know what to do with her life after school. She doesn’t seem to have any good choices. One option is to sign up for a contest to go to space to help build a space base. It is a 5 year contract that will get her family out of poverty but will bind her to a company that she doesn’t trust.
Over the course of a year, she competes for a spot on the team while also finishing school and volunteering to rescue animals off the beach.
“Like, why’d the manatee go extinct when mediocre men like Shears seem to be on the rise, multiplying by the damn second? RIP manatee.”
She wants her life to go back to normal. But her sister is still dead and normal was never that good to begin with.
“We’ve adapted to the climate, but the sea should not be rust red. It should not be this warm in March. And yet here we are, calling things we’ve played a role in record-breaking and abnormal. If we say we aren’t responsible enough times, we might believe it and absolve ourselves of any guilt. Teenagers will keep hanging out on the beach despite the devastation. Who knows? Maybe one day humans will evolve to not be bothered by red tide. Perhaps we already have. I can’t tell if that’s a tragedy or a triumph.”
Is going to space her way out or is she just running away? If she knows that the company is using her, can she use them back to get what she needs?
This book explores so many aspects of loss and grief.
- loss of her sister
- loss of her friends as they graduate and move away
- loss of animals as they go extinct
- potential loss of the planet from climate change
- loss of the life she has been living both by growing up and by needing to adapt to all the changes around her
The reader sees Juli work through all these throughout the school year. This is a lovely book that uses the story of space travel to stand in for moving out into the world and letting go of what you are comfortable with. It will speak to readers of all ages.
