I received a free copy thanks to Early Reviewers https://www.librarything.com/er_list.php

The Tortilla Star is about Bette, a white American woman who works in finance and teaches English to Latinx immigrants in her spare time. She is trying to live an ethical life and trying to figure out what she wants in a relationship.

Things I liked
I learnt more about the situation in the US for immigrants from Mexico.
I liked the main character Bette and her ethics. The fact that her coffee beans were always FAIR TRADE made me laugh (the author didn’t use capitals, but they were capitals in my head when I read it). I was laughing at myself, because I always buy fair trade coffee.

I liked that people who were learning a language weren’t immediately fluent in it. I thought it was a good introduction to the plight of illegal immigrants to the US that might appeal to someone who wouldn’t read a book like Solito, Solita https://www.librarything.com/work/22984995
I liked parts of the description of Bette discovering life in Mexico and some of the thoughts about learning languages.

Things I didn’t like
Bette was supposed to be so enlightened and non/anti-racist, but she was often quite patronising about the Latinx people she knew. Bette knew that she was finding it hard to learn Spanish and be confident speaking it, and yet she seemed impatient and picky about her learners and their mistakes with English. I felt that the author’s own prejudices might be coming through.

The writing style was clunky and the book seemed to jump around a bit. Every now and then I had to check that I hadn’t missed a page. There were two particular occasions when Bette had a major decision to make, or something significant was about to happen, and there was quite a bit of buildup and then the book just jumped ahead, so all the drama was drained from the situation.

The ending was a little anti-climactic, and then there was an epilogue and a whole lot of interesting stuff had happened in between. I would have liked more of the bits in between!

It might be that I don’t know Mexican Spanish, but I think there were mistakes in the Spanish (for example, I think it is quinceañera, but the book had quincinera).

I am not a fan of books with lots of words in italics to show that they might be foreign to the reader, and I thought it was particularly amusing that “chiles” was in italics. I think many readers of English would know what chiles are.

One things that made me almost fall over
Bette compares Mexican healthcare to US healthcare and thinks, “Thank God she lived in a country where people were accepted for emergency care, regardless of their ability to pay”. WHAT?! Isn’t the US famous for its broken medical system, especially for emergency care? I imagine most of Bette’s friends would not have been able to get emergency care in the US.

Other thoughts
I thought that there were good ideas in “The Tortilla Star” and some good characters, but the book was too long and there were some strange editorial choices. I would recommend it after a good edit.

I received a free review copy from Black Rose Writing thanks to Early Reviewers. I have requested several books from Black Rose Writing because they have had topics that caught my eye. However, I have found most of them a little amateur and in need of more enthusiastic editing (see my reviews of Managed Care https://www.librarything.com/review/163390792, Amiga https://www.librarything.com/review/181023995, West End Quartet https://www.librarything.com/work/19616050, and By Jove https://www.librarything.com/work/15050958/reviews/140482140). ( )