In this contemporary take on the story of Romeo and Juliet in the form of a novel-in-verse, singer and poet Park reimagines the roles and transports the action to New York City in 1993. Hannah is a Korean teen from the borough of Queens who finds herself enrapt with Angel, a Puerto Rican boy from Brooklyn. The two fall in love in the springtime, and this playful tale follows their entwined fates through the four seasons. While most readers know how the story goes, what stands out is Park's devotion to building each character and the uniquely vibrant world around them. At the fateful quinceañera where the star-crossed lovers meet, for example, the night is alive with Nike sneakers, early 1990s rap, Philly Blunts, and of loads of malt liquor. Likewise, Park's intermingling of slang with fragments of Spanish and Korean electrify the free-verse lyrics that dance and slide across the pages. With an energy and attitude closer to Lin Manuel Miranda's In the Heights than West Side Story, the spoken-word style of Park's wildly creative rendition will entrance readers.

A passionate novel in verse about the love between two New York City teenagers whose cultural and economic expectations eventually turn their relationship to dust.The book's poems, most just a page or two, are tied together in four sections named for the seasons, beginning with spring, when the flowers of all beginnings bud. We first meet Hannah and Angel separately; the first two poems introduce them in second grade, then the book leaps to high school, setting the stage for abrupt chronological disconnections throughout the narrative. Bookish and school-smart Hannah from Queens, the daughter of Korean immigrants, meets Boricua Angel, a young dealer from the streets of Bushwick, at a party and they immediately fall into a dark, heedless romance. Hannah, who chafes at her father's violent, controlling ways, eventually moves in with Angel and begins a different dance-one of poverty, Angel's drug addiction and infidelity, and her own burgeoning outbursts of rage. The richest parts of the book are the tantalizing glimpses of Hannah's culture-often seen through Hannah's thoughts of her mother and the Korean comfort food she would cook-and her yearning to not become her parents. Though Angel's character is well developed at first, we lose the thread of who he is beyond Nuyorican clichés as he starts to unravel from drug addiction. Ultimately, his humanity becomes rooted in his younger brother, Rafi, who was born with HIV and whom both Angel and Hannah fiercely love.A tender and honest story of young love striving to survive the streets.

Poet Park (The Temperature of This Water) reimagines Romeo & Juliet in her wrenching debut novel in verse, set in early 1990s New York City. The story follows two 16-year-olds: Queens girl Hannah, the daughter of Korean immigrants and a straight-A student who spends her nights defending her mother from Hannah-s father-s physical abuse, and Angel, a boy of Puerto Rican descent who lives in Brooklyn and dreams of becoming a pilot. After meeting in the spring at a Queens quinceañera, the two quickly fall in love, and resolve to preserve their bond and defend it from the judgments of their parents and respective communities. By summer break, Hannah-s parents disown her over the relationship and she moves into a cramped Bushwick apartment with Angel. Hannah-s ethnic and family background is given somewhat richer, more nuanced descriptions than Angel-s, but Park-s precise, vivid verse lends a unifying consistency, blending vernacular and poetic expressions and song lyrics (-He sighs & sings a Nas lyric-like a blue smoke ~ ring, it halos the air-) as she explores how the complicated natures of love, betrayal, poverty, and cultural identity affect Angel and Hannah-s relationship. Readers will find this tender and realistic portrait of first love hard to forget. Agent: Clare Mao, Europa Content. (May)

Gr 9 Up-Hannah, the daughter of Korean immigrants in Queens, meets Angel, a Puerto Rican boy in Brooklyn, and "It was shock at first sight, loud as lightning, da charge/between them nearly stopped traffic." Facing discrimination from both of their communities and the larger world, they feel like Romeo and Juliet as they embark on the first love of their lives. Dreams of a future together are ground down by poverty, racism, addiction, and the impacts of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1990s. Divided into four sections, this novel in verse moves from spring through winter, following the blossoming of their young love and its gradual withering under the reality that you cannot save someone else, only yourself. Angel and Hannah's tale asks "Would we/altar their love higher, deem it Epic" if they weren't poor people of color. VERDICT A realistic love story for fans of Elizabeth Acevedo or James Baldwin. A good general purchase for high schools. Tamara Saarinen, Pierce Cty. Lib., WA