Barely Floating by Lilliam RiveraIntermediate, Middle School    Kokila/Penguin    240 pp.8/23    9780593323120    $17.99e-book ed.  9780593323144    $10.99Twelve-year-old first-person narrator Nat (short for Natalia de la Cruz Rivera y ­Santiago) is all about body positivity­ and female strength. She feels conflicted, however­, when her mother’s values around feminism clash with her own love...

Lilliam Rivera (left) with Titi Luz. (Photo courtesy of Lilliam Rivera.) She wore a long, colorful falda and matching blouse, or blusa, with ribboned ruffles, perfectly made for twirling. On a small stage stood my aunt Luz E. Ortiz Vázquez, ready to dance with her partner, who took her by...

Never Look Back by Lilliam Rivera High School    Bloomsbury    320 pp.    g 9/20    978-1-5476-0373-2    $18.99 e-book ed.  978-1-5476-0374-9    $13.29 Pheus is an Afro-Dominican, bachata-singing teen whose Bronx world is upended when he meets Eury, a Puerto Rican girl visiting New York after she is forced from her home in the aftermath...