Featured on a Goodreads list encouraging readers to commemorate Hispanic Heritage Month is Viva Lola Espinoza, Ella Cerón’s debut novel. With snippets of Spanish woven into the chapters, readers follow Lola as she faces an immense change. 

The heart of the story is centered around Lola, a Mexican-American high schooler in California, receiving the news that she has gotten a C—in Spanish, a result that forces her to visit and stay in Mexico with her family until she is able to speak Spanish. 

Once in Mexico, Lola struggles with a strange family mystery: a curse that follows Lola’s family. But that’s when the book gets a bit challenging. For some readers, the book is about this curse, but then Cerón introduces romance into the plot and the things change from more of a coming-of-age novel to a magic-centered one.

Some second(or later) generation readers may be able to connect with Lola and her conflict with the sense of belonging, language, and culture. However, the book’s semi-frequent use of Spanish, may have some readers feeling as if they were ‘missing out’ on the dialogue. 

Viva Lola Espinoza is slow-paced with two major plot lines that worked just as harmoniously together in certain instances as they clashed in others. But at the end of the story, Cerón is able to deliver a story of a Mexican-American teenager finding answers about her family and herself, and unlocking the key to discovering her true self in a new and unfamiliar environment.