Praise for I'd Rather Burn Than Bloom

Winner of the Asian/Pacific American Award for Youth Literature
A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection​

"Rogers crafts a fast-paced narrative through Marisol’s powerful and poignant voice...Insights into family dynamics, changing friendships, and biracial identity make for realistically messy and enjoyable character growth that one can’t help but empathize with."

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- Publishers Weekly, Starred Review ☆

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"Readers who relish deep character development will appreciate Marisol’s messy evolution toward self-forgiveness... Her confessional first-person narration often reads like a movie, and it teems with vivid insights about crushes, longings, friend breakups, and complicated family dynamics set against the burning backdrop of the Albuquerque desert...The representation of a Filipino experience in the United States is done with superlative skill, rendering this beautifully written debut a model for how to expertly weave culturally specific cues into a universal story."

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- Kirkus, Starred Review ☆