The Gallery of Unfinished Girls

Gr 8 Up—Mercedes Moreno is an award-winning artist. But she's in a bit of a slump and is going through a lot. Mercedes's mom just rushed to Puerto Rico to be with her comatose mother, leaving the high school senior to take care of her 14-year-old sister, Angela. Complicating matters further, Mercedes is in love with her best friend Victoria and everyone seems to know it except for Victoria. A week later, a piano appears on Mercedes's front lawn. Angela falls in love and starts to play all the time. Shortly after the piano shows up, so does a new neighbor named Lilia, and she's a painter like Mercedes. Lilia soon becomes a part of the Moreno sisters' lives. She helps Angela, who might be a savant, on the piano. Lilia also invites Mercedes to paint with her at the Red Mangrove Estates. It's here that Mercedes finds clarity, begins to create, and feels inspired again. As her life continues to weigh on her, Mercedes spends more and more time at the estates and soon realizes she can't handle living two lives: one inside the estates and another outside of them. This is a great title that tackles death, love, creativity, growing up, and moving on. There are no tidy endings here, but that just makes this book that is sprinkled with some magical realism more relatable. It's a good read for fans of Natalie Standiford's How To Say Goodbye in Robot.