Review of Sanctuary by Paola Mendoza and Abby Sher

Sanctuary comes out September 1st.

I want to start off by saying that I haven’t read a book in who knows how long. When I try the words just fall off the page and I find myself reading the same page again and again. Trying to remember the names I just read, the places they went, and even the plot. I have read the first 80 pages of this one book maybe five times now and listened to it maybe another three. I can remember it when I reread it, but the story gets lost on me somehow. This is so vastly different from the type of reader that I used to be. I could read an entire book in one sitting. I could read an entire series that I loved in a day, but I haven’t read like that in years until now.

Reading “Sanctuary” by Paola Mendoza and Abby Sher was like looking into a tunnel and having it seal itself behind you. You have nowhere to go, but forward. There’s an end and you have to have to get there. Sanctuary is set in a dystopian future that feels all too real and present. The story takes place in the United States in the year 2032 and follows Valentina Gonzalez Ramirez who is 16 years old. In this future all American citizens are embedded with a microchip that is scanned throughout the day. Vali lives with her mother and younger brother in Vermont, but are forced to flee when deportation raids begin to occur in their town in Vermont. Vali and her mother are undocumented and have fake microchips that have kept them safe until now. Now, Vali, her mother, and younger brother must flee Vermont and head west to California which has now declared itself a Sanctuary. The journey separates Vali and her younger brother, Ernie, from their mother when her microchip fails. Now, Vali has to finish that journey alone with her little brother as they travel across the US in search of sanctuary.

This book doesn’t let you rest as it confronts you with the very real fear of being undocumented as you follow Vali’s journey through the United States. The fear and anxiety as you travel across the United States and come across the numerous challenges of doing this by yourself at 16 is too real. It is also too familiar. It’s the stories you might have heard from tia’s or tio’s about people locking themselves in bathrooms out of fear. Being deported to countries you’ve never even visited. People dying in the back of trucks because all they wanted was something better. It’s a visceral page turner that leaves you with the need to do something. To take action and fight to prevent a future even close to this one from happening.

So, I highly recommend Sanctuary by Paola Mendoza and Abby Sher. Read it, pick it up for yourself, a cousin, your mom, everyone. This is a story that isn’t going to leave you anytime soon.