[Review] What Fell From the Sky by Adrianna Cuevas

I generally love middle grade novels, but this one didn't garner a lot of interest for me. I did like the premise, and the book did a good job of illustrating the negative impacts of bigotry. I even appreciated that the book was loosely based on a historical event.

But outside of that, I didn't really care for the execution of this book. I found the writing to be overly simple and the pacing too slow. This book relies on realism—despite one obvious exception—and while it does generally pull it off, there are other times where events and people's reactions are so outlandish that I was left shaking my head, thinking, “Nope. That would never happen.” The tone is too somber and slow for such absurdity to work in this book. Then, towards the end of the book, readers are suddenly bombarded with everyone's point of view. Why? Introducing new POVs so late in a book is jarring and completely unnecessary, especially for a book this simple.

Basically, this book had too many obvious flaws which destroyed my willing suspension of disbelief and left me frustrated and dissatisfied.

Note: I received this book as an ARC. It is scheduled to be released February 11, 2025.

3 stars