Book Review - Merci Suarez Changes Gears

Merci Suarez Changes Gears is a slice-of-life story set in suburbia with a Latino family whose children are going to a private school of which one Merci Suarez is trying to fit in.

I personally love the realism of these characters. From the very first page, the reader will get the overall setting with time, location, situation, and characters naturally from the narration details of Merci’s everyday life. Exposition is expected from any narrator, maybe especially first-person, but I was personally amazed at how much detail author Meg Medina packed into every fiber of the story instead of relying on anecdotal side comments.

Medina embraces Merci’s (and probably her own) Latino background by referencing Mexican/Cuban culture and peppering Spanish into Merci’s mostly English narration. The feeling of being in a Latino family is palpable though there were moments that I felt alienated in not knowing some terms of endearment like Tia for Auntie. For about half the book, I thought Tia was a name not a title. A key of terms therefore might have been nice to ground myself better in the world.

Yet indeed this isn’t a story about just a Latino girl. The complexities shown in this book of personal relationships even at a sixth grade level can happen to any person, I would imagine. There’s in-fighting, rivalry, get-togethers, birthday parties, group projects, gossip, note passing. And these were all between just two people: Merci and her frenemy Edna Santos!

The difference with Merci and her family, however, is that overall no one in the Suarez family actually talks down or disrespects one another. All that they do, even the unfair parts, is to take care of the family which makes for relatable family conflicts. Even to other people, Merci, for instance, would ultimately look for solutions and call on friends and family for favors and assistance, making her a driving force that I (and some other characters in the story) respect. The overall integrity with how she treats the situations she finds herself in makes me feel Merci makes quite a good role model.

The overall feeling of satisfaction I get from reading Merci Suarez Changes Gears is a rare delight. Even though many times a slice-of-life book can get bogged down in daily life details, author Medina manages to mesh them into the story arc of surviving sixth grade and changes in Merci’s family dynamic so that they both enrich the story and highlight that life for the reader to enjoy.