{"id":44781,"date":"2025-01-28T21:22:44","date_gmt":"2025-01-29T02:22:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=44781"},"modified":"2025-01-28T21:22:44","modified_gmt":"2025-01-29T02:22:44","slug":"review-of-shut-up-this-is-serious-by-carolina-ixta-read-by","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=44781","title":{"rendered":"Review of Shut Up, This Is Serious, by Carolina Ixta, read by"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Shut Up, This Is Serious<\/em><\/p>\n

by Carolina Ixta
\nread by Frankie Corzo<\/p>\n

Quill Tree Books, 2024. 10 hours, 19 minutes.
\nReview written January 22, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
\n2025 Morris Award Finalist
\n2025 Pura Belpr\u00e9 Young Adult Author Award<\/p>\n

Shut Up, This Is Serious<\/em> is about a high school senior named Bel\u00e9n whose life seems like it’s falling apart. Her best friend Leti is pregnant, and Leti’s going to love that baby – but she hasn’t yet dared to tell her racist parents that her boyfriend, the baby’s father, is Black.<\/p>\n

As for Bel\u00e9n – she stopped caring about classes last year when her father left them and took her mom’s savings. Bel\u00e9n feels like no one even sees her anymore. So when she finds a college guy who’s willing to have sex with her, she doesn’t let herself notice all the things that are wrong with that, because it makes the heaviness lift for a little while.<\/p>\n

But when she learns she has to complete one major English assignment in order to save her grade and graduate, she’s also paired with a partner whose hopes of going to the college of his choice are riding on it, too.<\/p>\n

And that description doesn’t do justice to all the ways the pressures on Bel\u00e9n are portrayed and interwoven. She does lots of coping in bad ways, but let me say that the story does end with a hopeful note, and it’s an earned hope through the novel.<\/p>\n

I was on the Morris Award committee a year ago, so it’s fun to see what they’ve discovered this year. I’ll admit it wasn’t my favorite read – a little too painful to read about the ways she wasn’t coping well. But wearing my committee hat, I do want to say that this is an outstanding debut novel, with nuanced characters and situations, and I hope the first of many more to come from this author.<\/p>\n

carolinaixta.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Find this review on Sonderbooks<\/a> at: www.sonderbooks.com\/Teens\/shut_up_this_is_serious.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.<\/p>\n

What did you think of this book?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shut Up, This Is Serious by Carolina Ixta read by Frankie Corzo Quill Tree Books, 2024. 10 hours, 19 minutes. Review written January 22, 2025, from a library eaudiobook. 2025 Morris Award Finalist 2025 Pura Belpr\u00e9 Young Adult Author Award Shut Up, This Is Serious is about a high school senior named Bel\u00e9n whose life […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,21,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-award-winners","category-contemporary","category-teen-fiction-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44781"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44815,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44781\/revisions\/44815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}