YOU DON'T LIVE HERE

Sixteen-year-old Sasha’s world is upended when her single mother is killed in an earthquake.

After surviving a 6.0 San Bernardino earthquake, Sasha must go live with her maternal grandparents in Orange County, California. She hibernates for three months before emerging to begin 11th grade. Severely bullied in middle school, her coping strategy thus far has been to hide behind her camera as a yearbook photographer. Unfortunately, Sasha’s ambitious and controlling grandmother refuses to let her join the yearbook team or art club at her new school and instead insists she participate in mock trial, which she loathes. Wanting to please her grandparents, Sasha caves. She makes some new and cool popular friends via her grandparents’ country club, but events at a party soon clarify their untrustworthiness. The interesting twist to the perennial teen themes of fitting in, self-discovery, and truth-telling is that Sasha is bisexual. Her love interest is art club president Lily, despite her grandparents’ desire that she date golden boy Cole. The traumas of grief and earthquake survival take a backseat to the more pedestrian anxieties of what club to join and which friends and romantic interests to claim. The first-person narrative is plodding; Sasha agonizes for many chapters about the same issues. For teen readers who are slowly uncovering their own truths, the pace might feel appropriate. Most main characters are white; Lily is Chinese American.

While not without faults, a tale of survival and rebuilding.