REVIEW: Adios to My Old Life by Caridad Ferrer

Adios to My Old Life by Cari­dad Ferrer, copy­right 2006, 256 pages and avail­able in ebook as well as paper­back, pub­lisher is MTV. Adios to My Old Life is a apt title for a book about a young girl whose life changes because of a  life-​long dream to be a per­former comes true.  As the story opens, we are intro­duced to our nar­ra­tor, 17 year-​old Alegría Mon­tero or “Ali” to her family and friends. Grow­ing up in Miami as a single parent, her Papi is a college professor of music and has taught his daugh­ter a love for music that goes soul deep. He even gives her a Bernabé guitar. Life starts to change for  Ali when she sends in her Spanish rendition of Tony Braxton’s “Unbreak My Heart”  that lands her an audition with the judges of Oye Mi Canto.  Her best friend, Sosi, is at her side doing her hair and make-​up and pro­vid­ing her the necessary support.  Thus, Ali makes the cut and life for her as she knows it — changes forever.

Of course, there is con­tention at home, how­ever, when Ali’s father finds out about the audi­tion. He’s not happy with it but allows Ali to com­pete. The pro­duc­ers of show require that Ali have a chap­eron since she’s a minor and so her father taps a col­league and best friend, Elaine Garces, to watch over his daugh­ter while at the “McMan­sion” as Ali dubs it, which is where the con­tes­tants are stay­ing while they rehearse for the show.  

There are many inter­est­ing sub­plots and threads that help make this book very engag­ing as we watch Ali trans­form from a high school nobody to an aspir­ing singer with talent. Let’s start off with the obvious- the com­pe­ti­tion. It’s fierce and nat­u­rally you have the typ­i­cal jeal­ous, venge­ful com­peti­tor whose job it is to dis­tract and elim­i­nate you at any costs. I thought the antics were a bit over the top. Need­less to say that the perp gets their just desserts that had me laugh­ing out loud in the end.  Then there is the single father story arc where you have Ali’s father who is described as being this hot music pro­fes­sor. That was a nice, very well done in it’s subtly. Alas, there’s the father/daughter story arc that was very nice as the two try to com­mu­ni­cate past their dif­fer­ences to con­nect to what mat­ters to both of them: their love of music and each other.  Next you have the chaos and fre­netic energy that is real­ity TV. Most of it was rather famil­iar seeing as this is the age of “real­ity TV.”

Then there’s the romance. I must admit it was rather nice. This book is geared toward YA so there are no sex scenes. Just a lot of kiss­ing and one scene where the couple comes close but it doesn’t go any fur­ther. The author has a refresh­ing voice espe­cially in how she blends in the Spanish phrases, giving her char­ac­ters some authen­tic­ity. Alas, not being fluent in Span­ish myself, I was able to follow along nicely.  Ali made an inter­est­ing and rather funny nar­ra­tor. I also like Elaine a lot who was the mother Ali never had. Sec­ondary char­ac­ters made cer­tain scenes funny and mem­o­rable. Andre, the wardrobe designer had more than his fair share of funny scenes. 

I enjoyed this book and while I thought that Ali some­times bor­dered on being too absorbed in her new found star­dom and pub­lic­ity with the google searches and fan mail and the atten­tion seek­ing fans and autographs- the author man­ages to keep her char­ac­ter some­what grounded in real­ity. This is a short novel and it was a rather quick read. Great pacing, great story, good char­ac­ters that all made this reader keep turn­ing the pages till I reached the end. I could add a few more quips about other annoy­ances but feel it would be of no value. By no means was this a per­fect book. What book is? I will end this review stat­ing that this was a very nice debut and a enjoy­able read. Yes, I would read more of her work.  A B read for me.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Cari­dad Ferrer, Real­ity TV, YA novel, Romance

Tagged as: Caridad Ferrer, music, Reality TV, Teen literature