Review Detail

The Inexplicable Logic of My Life is a brilliant story of youth at an end, adulthood on the horizon, the meaning of family, the many faces of love, and the difficulty of knowing how to hold on while at the same time letting go.

It’s a fitting theme for readers who loved Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe. Some of us are having a hard time letting go of that one, and for good reason. But if we hold on to it too hard, looking only to the past, we’ll miss the captivating beauty of this next one. And that would be a tragedy.

“Sal used to know his place with his adoptive gay father, their loving Mexican-American family, and his best friend, Samantha. But it’s senior year, and suddenly Sal is throwing punches, questioning everything, and realizing he no longer knows himself.”

That’s about as much as the blurb has to say. Pretty short for a 464-page book. Is that really all there is to it? Of course not. But to reveal any details of complication or plot would be sure to spoil something. That said, it’s not a plot-driven book. It reads more like a cross between a journal and a memoir, written by a modern teen with an old soul.

If you like the sound of that, you’ll flat-out love this book.

Yes, the novel has diverse characters—rich, magnificent characters. No, it does not have romance. It has joy. It has anger. It has kindness. It has fear. It has painfully long moments of holding your breath, and it has the inevitable surrender of taking the next one.

Because eventually you have to. Because life goes on.

But what this book has most of all is grace. It is the grace that stays with you–and what you will hold on to–long after you have turned the last page.