My Heart Underwater

by Laurel Flores Fantauzzo, Amielynn Abellera (Read by)

Overview

Fans of Adib Khorram and Randy Ribay will love this coming-of-age debut about a Filipina American teen drowning under pressure and learning to trust her heart. 

Corazon Tagubio is an outcast at the Catholic school she attends on scholarship. Her crush on her teacher, Ms. Holden, doesn’t help. At home, Cory worries that less-than-perfect grades aren’t good enough for her parents, who already work overtime to support her distant half-brother in the Philippines.

After an accident leaves her dad comatose, Cory feels like Ms. Holden is the only person who really understands her. But when a crush turns into something more and the secret gets out, Cory is sent to her relatives in Manila. She’s not prepared to face strangers in an unfamiliar place, but she discovers how the country that shaped her past might also redefine her future.

This novel takes readers on a journey across the world as Cory comes to understand her family, her relationships, and ultimately, herself.

“My Heart Underwater is a lovely, magnificent wonder of a novel that will leave you with the rarest of tender heartaches: life-affirming, life-inspiring, life-loving; a heartache of joy and becoming. You won’t walk freely, or willingly, from these pages.” —New York Times bestselling author Marjorie Liu

* A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2020 * A 2022 ALA Rainbow Booklist Selection *

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781799943648
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	10/20/2020
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 1.50(h) x 5.00(d)
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

Laurel Flores Fantauzzo grew up in Thousand Oaks, CA, and graduated from a private Catholic high school. She lived in Teachers Village in the Philippines for many years and is the author of The First Impulse (2017), a nonfiction love story and mystery set in Metro Manila. She lives between Honolulu and Metro Manila with her wife. My Heart Underwater is her debut YA novel. Visit her online at www.laurelfantauzzo.com.

Editorial Reviews

My Heart Underwater is a lovely, magnificent wonder of a novel that will leave you with the rarest of tender heartaches: life-affirming, life-inspiring, life-loving; a heartache of joy and becoming. You won’t walk freely, or willingly, from these pages. — New York Times bestselling author Marjorie Liu

Beautifully unsettling and deeply satisfying, My Heart Underwater should be read by all—and it’s a gift to any community, not just the YA community, that such a heartfelt, literary novel is now in our hands. — Gina Apostol, author of Gun Dealers' Daughter, PEN/Open Book Award winner

A wise, complex exploration of a young person on the cusp of adulthood as she navigates the in-between: being Filipinx in America and American in the Philippines. Readers who yearn for stories closer to the nuances, contradictions, and messiness of real life will love Cory and root for her.
— Grace Talusan, author of The Body Papers, winner of the Restless Books Prize

“A (home)coming out story that rides a deep undercurrent of love.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“This emotionally powerful YA debut sensitively portrays the tension between Cory’s American upbringing and attempts to stay true to her cultural roots.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Not to be missed." — School Library Journal

“This soulful #OwnVoices story explores how love for family and tradition can conflict with personal dignity." — Booklist

“Smoothly woven and intriguing glimpses of Filipino culture, language, and economy pop up throughout this #ownvoices novel.” — Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

“Fantauzzo’s emotional story extends beyond Cory’s search for identity and belonging, adding insights about both historical and metaphorical colonization, while readers are immersed in the uncertainty that surrounds new and ongoing family crises, resentment, and forgiveness.” — Horn Book Magazine

From the Publisher

Beautifully unsettling and deeply satisfying, My Heart Underwater should be read by all—and it’s a gift to any community, not just the YA community, that such a heartfelt, literary novel is now in our hands.

Gina Apostol

A wise, complex exploration of a young person on the cusp of adulthood as she navigates the in-between: being Filipinx in America and American in the Philippines. Readers who yearn for stories closer to the nuances, contradictions, and messiness of real life will love Cory and root for her.

Grace Talusan

Fantauzzo’s emotional story extends beyond Cory’s search for identity and belonging, adding insights about both historical and metaphorical colonization, while readers are immersed in the uncertainty that surrounds new and ongoing family crises, resentment, and forgiveness.

Horn Book Magazine

Smoothly woven and intriguing glimpses of Filipino culture, language, and economy pop up throughout this #ownvoices novel.

Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

This soulful #OwnVoices story explores how love for family and tradition can conflict with personal dignity."

Booklist

My Heart Underwater is a lovely, magnificent wonder of a novel that will leave you with the rarest of tender heartaches: life-affirming, life-inspiring, life-loving; a heartache of joy and becoming. You won’t walk freely, or willingly, from these pages.

New York Times bestselling author Marjorie Liu

This soulful #OwnVoices story explores how love for family and tradition can conflict with personal dignity."

Booklist

Smoothly woven and intriguing glimpses of Filipino culture, language, and economy pop up throughout this #ownvoices novel.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

My Heart Underwater is a lovely, magnificent wonder of a novel that will leave you with the rarest of tender heartaches: life-affirming, life-inspiring, life-loving; a heartache of joy and becoming. You won’t walk freely, or willingly, from these pages.

null New York Times bestselling author Marjorie Liu

Amielynn Abellera’s tones and pacing demonstrate the discomfort of 17-year-old Filipina-American Corazon (Cory) Tagubio. At school she’s not interested in her peers’ chatter about boys; at home she sometimes feels ignored by her mother and father. When an accident puts her father in a coma, Abellera voices Cory’s despair, which is relieved by the satisfying connection she feels when her history teacher returns the love she feels. That moment is shattered when her mother sees Cory in an embrace with her teacher and sends her to live with her half-brother in the Philippines. Abellera reveals Cory’s deep sensitivity as she learns of her parents’ hidden past and strengthens both faraway family bonds and belief in herself. The Taglish words threaded throughout the text increase the musicality and authenticity of this story. S.W. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

JANUARY 2021 - AudioFile

Amielynn Abellera’s tones and pacing demonstrate the discomfort of 17-year-old Filipina-American Corazon (Cory) Tagubio. At school she’s not interested in her peers’ chatter about boys; at home she sometimes feels ignored by her mother and father. When an accident puts her father in a coma, Abellera voices Cory’s despair, which is relieved by the satisfying connection she feels when her history teacher returns the love she feels. That moment is shattered when her mother sees Cory in an embrace with her teacher and sends her to live with her half-brother in the Philippines. Abellera reveals Cory’s deep sensitivity as she learns of her parents’ hidden past and strengthens both faraway family bonds and belief in herself. The Taglish words threaded throughout the text increase the musicality and authenticity of this story. S.W. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

JANUARY 2021 - AudioFile

★ 2020-08-12
Corazon “Cory” Tagubio is a Southern Californian FilAm caught between her duty toward her hardworking immigrant parents and her sexual awakening.

When her mother catches 17-year-old Cory kissing Ms. Holden, her 25-year-old White Catholic school history teacher, she sends Cory to the Philippines to live with Kuya Jun, an older half brother whom she has only met through Skype. Cory arrives in the Philippines heartbroken twice over: Her beloved father is in a coma, and, separated from Ms. Holden, Cory feels untethered and deeply alone. In her YA debut, Fantauzzo’s gorgeous writing presents an emotionally wrought American-born teenager on a journey to define her present as well as understand her family’s past. The unethical relationship with Ms. Holden is effectively used as a device for Cory’s journey of self-inquiry and growing understanding of real love, bolstered by her cousin’s and friends’ more developed ethical and political consciousnesses. One of a cast of splendidly drawn characters, Cory faces hidden truths about familial separation and lasting bonds that provide a layered backdrop for her own catharsis. In tight sentences, Fantauzzo packs a punch, describing Cory’s fraught emotional tightrope as she negotiates Catholic dogma of right and wrong, repression, and rage in ways that will surely resonate with anyone who simply cannot live any longer without questioning norms. Tagalog and Taglish are interlaced throughout, adding an atmospheric texture that refreshingly lends rarely depicted insights into authentic Filipino humor, conflict, and expressions of love.

A (home)coming out story that rides a deep undercurrent of love. (Fiction. 14-18)

Kirkus Reviews