Groovy Girl 2: Sabina Saved

Sketches of a girl: Emerging from a family trauma when she was eight, Isa—now fifteen—moves through adolescence and all its finery and ferocity. Along the way, she faces demons, dances with sexuality, wonders about love, and navigates a web of parent figures and other authorities. Filipina she is: fast, fit, and…inferior. Forever in the shadow of her áte, her older sister, Isa swims along, stitching together the fabric of her identity in the context of so many other threads of her pasts, presents, and futures, with hints of violence, love affairs, and squabbles—all the elements of a Filipino-American, Filipino, and American melodrama. Join Isa, honest as hell and sassy as ever, on her ride to adulthood, poking into all the crevices of herself—her nerdiness; her romantic side, both soulful and literary; her athleticism; and her Daddy's girl persona. Amidst it all, Isa creates her identity, piecing together fragments of anguish, mental health episodes, her alliteration attraction, her philosopher philosophies, and her love of Ms. God. Isa's voice speaks to each of us. You know all those things you think and never say out loud? Groovy Girl 2: Sabina Saved encapsulates all of this—freely spoken and boldly written. —O.M.B., mother of an 18-year-old cancer survivor and a chief impactor of social equity and environmental well-being

Nearly 16-year-old Isabel "Isa" José is not reeling from the aftermath of the illness of her older sister, Makena. Nope, no siree, because to Isa, this would sound exceedingly clichéd and much too melodramatic. Isa couldn't be further from a cliché: She is a self-proclaimed word nerd and grammar guru; she is also a decent varsity tennis doubles player with a high-B average at her suburban-northeast-LA high school. If you ask Isa, the ones who are reeling—even spiraling—are her annoying ghetto-poser brother; her resting-bitch-faced, passionately steadfast mother; and her chillaxed-but-forever-Mafioso father. After all, young-onset colon cancer in a Filipino-American family would not qualify as...a cliché. In this zany, gut-wrenching sequel to Groovy Girl—winner of the 2022 National Indie Excellence Award for Asian American Pacific Islander Fiction—Isa continues to look for, maybe even find, her place in a world that could be, simply, absurdly ridiculous. Why are two of Makena's ex-boyfriends—Berkeley grads with fathers who both happen to be cardiologists—suddenly in Isa's life? Could this be a blatant metaphor for Isa's hurting heart? And who is this gangly, adorable boy-man she meets in an elevator at a San Francisco hotel, and why is her hurting heart booming like the greatest bass tone ever? Groovy Girl 2: Sabina Saved finds most of its mise-en-scène inside Isa's discombobulated but sparkling mind, set against flashbacks and present-world experiences that make this quirky, hot-blooded teen question so much, perhaps all too much—everything from her own exemplary grammar, along with the un-motives of her lively, uncompromisingly forthright titas and titos, to what might engulf her soul in flames, whether it's teaching journaling classes or helping a former bully in need. If you fell in love with the scrappy, precocious 8-year-old in Groovy Girl, you might not, at the outset, be so enamored of the hard-bitten teen in Groovy Girl 2. You could, however, end up adoring the holy heck out of Miss Isa J. by the time her cackle-inducing, thought-provoking musings inhabit your own discombobulated, sparkling mind. Nah—you won't fall in love. Nope, no siree, because that would be much too clichéd and exceedingly melodramatic...

Groovy Girl 2: Sabina Saved is Maritza Roño's second book. Groovy Girl, her debut novel under the pseudonym "i.b. casey cui," was a 2022 winner at the National Indie Excellence Awards for Asian American Pacific Islander Fiction; a shortlist recipient of the Hawthorne Prize; a finalist at the American Fiction Awards and the American Writing Awards for Multicultural Fiction and Young Adult Fiction; and a first-place winner at the BookFest Book Awards and Speak Up Talk Radio Firebird Book Awards in General Fiction and New Fiction (first time published), respectively. Ms. Roño grew up with her Filipino-American family in Southern California, in the San Gabriel Valley area, and has lived in Los Angeles, San Jose, Emeryville, San Francisco, and Park City. She attended UC Berkeley as an undergraduate and has an MFA in English and creative writing (fiction) from Mills College. Two young, beautiful boys and a mini goldendoodle god keep this colon cancer survivor's retirement-age body young, alive, and kicking some major booty.