Touching Snow by M. Sindy Felin

Fourteen-year-old Karina is the first of her family to be born in America instead of Haiti. Her family struggles to get by, and she and her siblings live in constant fear of their horribly abusive stepfather until they finally take matters into their own hands. This book was a fast read and easy to get into, but it felt arbitrarily set in the 1980s. (Really, are teens today going to get references to Menudo?) It felt like yet another of those books that are supposedly marketed to teens, but are really just nostalgia on behalf of the author and are really aimed toward other readers their age. Plus, the narrative style was very distracting -- Karina at time speaks directly to the reader, and it isn't until the very end that it becomes clear who that reader is. Poor editing. Definitely a NAY.