This Is the Year
by Gloria Muñoz
High School    Holiday    368 pp.
1/25    9780823458363    $18.99
e-book ed.  9780823462186    $11.99

In this evocative near-future science fiction novel, high school senior Juli is still reeling from the death of her twin sister, Ofe, a year earlier. After a recruitment officer for the Cometa Mission of the New American Space Program visits her school, Juli, a “New American” whose family emigrated from Colombia, sees the program as a potential ticket out of a sinking Florida—and out of this world. As she starts training, she can’t bear to tell her mom about her plan to leave, and moments of earthly beauty and reconnection with her and Ofe’s friends—including one who’s become something more—pull at her to stay. The novel is told in a lyrical blend of first-person narration and second-person addresses to Ofe, occasionally veering into verse as the protagonist explores her love of writing. Details such as the city’s de facto segregation by class and Juli’s volunteer beach cleanups create a frighteningly realistic vision of a state facing full-on climate disaster. Juli’s grief is deftly interwoven with this existential anxiety: each environmental setback, such as when manatees become extinct, is yet another loss of something the twins shared. At the same time, her more familiar high school experiences and fond memories of her sister’s snark (“I can see you doing the slowest eye roll in the world and saying, ¿J, en serio?”) offer a tinge of hope.

From the ">May/June 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.