Apr 22

Apr 22 Angel & Hannah

Author: Ishle Yi Park
Publisher: One World
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

This sweeping, unforgettable reimagining of Romeo and Juliet tells the story of an interracial couple in 1990s New York City who are determined to protect their love against all odds

Hannah, a Korean American girl from Queens, New York, and Angel, a Puerto Rican boy from Brooklyn, fall in love in the spring of 1993. Hannah, who comes from a strict Korean home, meets Angel, a free and beautiful boy, at a quinceañera.

Told in seasons, Angel & Hannah holds all of the tension and cadence of blank verse while adding dynamic and expressive language, creating new kinds of engrossing and magnetic forms. The hip-hop sonnets and poems are dynamic, arresting, observant, and magical, conveying the intimacies and sacrifices of love and addiction and the devastating realities of struggle and loss.

Committed to cultural details and the vernacular of Queens and Brooklyn, this is a hip-hop love story, not of the Capulets and the Montagues, but two New York City kids trying to survive and grow within their families and communities, driven by an all-consuming love.

TL;DR Review

I have nothing but so much praise for Angel & Hannah. From the first page, I was hooked, and by the last, my heart had left my body.

For you if: You like emotional books and/or want to reading more (or try reading) novels in verse.

Full Review

Thank you to One World for granting me a review copy via NetGalley. I was blown away.

Beyond flushed, sweating bodies pushed,
pushing like cattle below black & buzzing speakers, under a torn pink streamer
loose as a tendril of hair—lush—
his eyes. Darkluminous. Warm. A blush floods her.
Hannah sucks in her breath, but can't pull back.
Music fades. A hush
he's a young buck in the underbrush,
still in a disco ball dance of shadow & light
Their forbidden love instantly and wildly blooms along the Jackie Robinson Expressway.

Angel & Hannah, a novel in verse, is a Romeo and Juliet retelling about a Korean-American girl from Queens and a Puerto Rican boy from Brooklyn in the 1990s. Yes, it sounds incredible. And yes, it is incredible.

First, let’s talk about the story — emotional, beautiful, heartbreaking. Hannah comes from a lonely, strict home with a secret ugliness, and Angel lives the reality of NYC in the 90s, where drug trade and violence are part of everyday life. Then the two meet at a quinceañera, and their whole worlds are turned upside down. The story is broken into four sections for the four seasons, but it moves fluidly through time across the span of several years as we watch the rise and fall of their great love. There is a lot of pain in this book — addiction and loneliness and loss and heartbreak. But there is also so much beauty, and not a little bit of hope. And I so loved the fire inside Hannah and the softness inside Angel.

Now let’s talk about this novel being in verse. Ishle Yi Park breathes life into language, with poetry that’s both gritty and gorgeous. This isn’t the kind of poetry that leaves you scratching your head, feeling like you missed something — it’s the kind with rhythm and subtle rhyme that feels inevitable, that carries you forward while demanding you slow down, that breaks your heart wide open, that wants you to read it again and this time out loud. It’s the kind of poetry that will appeal to those who read a lot of poetry just as much as it will appeal to those who barely ever read poetry.

By the end, my heart had completely left my body. I wanted to flip back to page one and start all over. And I wanted to tell everyone that they should read it immediately.