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  • The Go-Between by Veronica Chambers
  • Karen Coats
Chambers, Veronica The Go-Between. Delacorte, 2017 [208p]
Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-101-93095-3 $16.99
E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-101-93096-0 $10.99
Reviewed from galleys         R Gr. 7-10

Camilla del Valle is not as comfortable with her role as one of the #RKOMC (Rich Kids of Mexico City) as her friends are, and she's completely over it when one of her supposed friends posts a picture of her wildly famous telenovela star mother's anxiety meds for the world to see. When her mom is cast as a maid about to turn entrepreneur in an American TV show, Cammi decides to take advantage of her stateside anonymity by letting the girls at her new school in LA believe her mother is actually a maid and that Cammi's on scholarship. Her new friends Tiggy and Willow are casually racist about Mexicans, but Cammi enjoys her secret too much to let a little thing like that bother her. When Milly, a girl whose life actually mirrors the one Cammi is playing at, reveals Cammi's secret, things blow up, and Cammi has to figure out a way to apologize and make things right. Despite the spectacularly bad taste of her deception, Cammi manages to remain a sympathetic character, mostly because she is able to continually justify her reasons and expose her doubts, and because Tiggy and Willow are so heedlessly condescending. Milly, then, emerges as a hero, forcing her to tell the truth and then punishing her just long enough before forgiving her. The girls have the requisite scene where unacknowledged privilege is called out and apologies are made, followed by the equally familiar closure of a community fundraising street fair where harmony is restored. While such scenes are swiftly becoming clichés in feel-good diverse literature, the lead-up to them is original, and the characters here are all well drawn and appealing. Collections in need of a different kind of immigration story will want to check this out.

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