The Inexplicable Logic of My Life Book Reivew

So I just finished reading The Inexplicable Logic of My Life by Benjamin Alire Sáenz! Like practically every other book that I write reviews for, I first encountered this title through Booktube. I was actually looking for Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Sáenz, but I couldn’t find it at the library and got this one instead. After reading both of them, I found that I enjoyed this one more than Ari and Dante. The writing style is beautiful, and the theme of friendship was so unique and present throughout the story.

Anyway, the main character of this book is Salvador ‘Sal’ Silva, a Caucasian teen who lives with his adoptive gay father in a Mexican-American family. Sal and his best friend, Samantha, are about to start their senior year of high school. But a bad encounter with a fellow student and a family crisis leaves Sal scrambling to hold onto his world as he knows it. Meanwhile, Sal’s past begins to chase him relentlessly, forcing him to hunt after his origins in his own identity. Sal begins to change in ways that scare him, and it will take family, love, friendship, and a good deal of faith to bring him back.

SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT

“I have a memory that is almost like a dream…”

The themes of family, friendship, faith, love, sickness, ethnicity, grief, doubt, and growing up were all so present in this story. In many ways, I could identify with Sal and his situation, especially family, sickness, faith, and doubt. I love the unique way that the author presents each one of these themes through every single one of Sal’s relationships with the people that love him: his family with his dad, his ethnically diverse family, his friendship with Fito, Mima’s strong faith, Sal’s unique love for Sam, the sickness that weighs down his entire family, the grief when it makes its mark, and the doubt of growing up.

“Maybe I’d always had the wrong idea as to who I really was.”

Sal’s ever present concern about who he would become when he grew up was something that touched me when I read it. It was this perfectly crafted uncertainty by the author to express the worries of coming of age. Sal’s uneasiness about his biological father, and nature versus nurture, was also well portrayed in the story. I love how the book showed that we choose our families, and that family is always with the people you love. 

“Somehow, because she was all over the map, it helped me to not be all over the map. That didn’t make sense, but me and Sam,, what we had, well, it had a logic all its own.”

Sal’s unique relationship with Sam was one of my favorite things in this book. I appreciated how the author didn’t spiral their relationship into the void of romance, but instead, brought light to another type of love that isn’t too commonly seen in YA books between a boy and a girl main character. Their relationship shows the love of two friends that would do absolutely anything for each other, who knew each other so well that they were each other’s tethers to the peace in the chaos of the world. It’s a unique and pure friendship love that I wish would show up in more YA contemporaries.

I also love how Sam and Sal’s friendship is an almost perfect mirror of the relationship between Sal’s adoptive father and his mother. It truly goes to further enforce that our true families are the people that we love and can pass that love on with, and that we are who we choose to grow up to be. Our families and pasts don’t define that.

“There are more songs living inside her than there are leaves on her tree.”

I think I’d have to dedicate an entire section to Mima, because she was truly the life of the story, and even in her death, she was never truly gone in Sal’s story. She just sort of tied the entire family together; teaching Sam how to make tortillas, talking on the phone with Sal, befriending Fito. She had so much character and culture and religion radiating from her. I loved all the Spanish phrases that Mima spoke and all the Mexican culture that Sáenz brought into the writing through her. Sal’s moments with Mima were always the calm in the eye of the storm.

Overall, this book was one of the most touching and comforting YA contemporaries that I have ever read. Alire Sáenz does such a wonderful job of incorporating moments of nature and calm into the book that helped me to just relax and appreciate my own world more (esp. since I read it the day I was also sick with the flu, like Sal). Sal and Sam’s coming of age, Sal’s anger issues, and all the family issues presented in this book are all important topics that are prevalent in teens especially. This book is an anchor of sorts for every lost reader to walk with Sal, Sam, and Fito and find comfort in knowing that even fictional characters experience, but overcome, life.

photo: @nerd_on_books/Instagram