Canto Contigo
by Jonny Garza Villa
High School    Wednesday/St. Martin’s    352 pp.
4/24    9781250875754    $20.00
e-book ed.  9781250875761    $11.99

Mariachi is everything to seventeen-year-old Mexican American Rafael Casimiro Álvarez, given his natural singing talent and the musical chops that run in his family. After the death of his abuelo, upholding his mariachi legacy becomes a way to cope with the loss. When Rafie’s family moves from (fictional) North Amistad to San Antonio at the start of his senior year, he expects to be lead vocalist in his new school’s perpetually second-place mariachi group, Todos Colores. His hubris wins him few fans and he is instead made to sing backup for Rey, a cute boy Rafie hooked up with at a party during the previous year’s Mariachi Extravaganza Nacional competition. Rafie’s ambition forces him to suppress his lingering feelings for Rey, but both find their mutual attraction difficult to ignore. Determined Rey, who is afromexicano and trans, is an antidote to Rafie’s attitude, as are the queer and proud members of Todos Colores, a fully realized group who celebrates their Mexican heritage, and counter any mariachi conventions steeped in machismo and homophobia (as addressed in an author’s note). The use of Mexican argot adds relatable humor, while Rafie’s frustrating road to growth and the mariachi musical backdrop make for a memorable queer romance.

From the May/June 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.