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    My Heart Underwater
    My Heart Underwater
    My Heart Underwater
    Audiobook9 hours

    My Heart Underwater

    Written by Laurel Flores Fantauzzo

    Narrated by Amielynn Abellera

    3/5

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    About this audiobook

    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 *

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 20, 2020
    ISBN9780063033269
    Author

    Laurel Flores Fantauzzo

    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.

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    Reviews for My Heart Underwater

    3/5

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    • 3/5
      Narrated by Amielynn Abellera. Corazon "Cory" has strong feelings for her 25-year-old history teacher. Then her mother catches Cory in a passionate kiss with Ms Holden. With Cory's father in the hospital ICU, Cory's mother decides to send Cory to stay with her half-brother Jun (son of Cory's father) in the Philippines for the rest of the school year. Cory has never been to the Philippines before, never met her brother in person, and she grieves the separation from her teacher while also fearing for her father's condition. Narrator Abellera performs with cultural authenticity, nailing the accents and recognizing the nuances of Filipino culture.
    • 4/5
      Corazon is Cory) a Filipino American. Her father is a tradesman, painting, plastering, gardening, etc. Unfortunately one day he fell of the roof of a house and was severely injured. Cory also h as a cursh on her history teacher, Ms. Holden. When Cory's mother discovers them kissing, she is shocked. She makes a difficult decision--she sends Cory to the Philippines to live with her half brother, Jun, a person she's only seen on Skype calls.It is there, though, that she learns about her family, her mother's distancing herself from her own controlling father, the fact that Cory's father was previously married, that her father has a brother. As the weeks go by, Cory's father makes agonizingly slow progress, but Cory herself finally feels like she's found her friends in her brother's bandmates. And slowly she comes to learn that what her teacher did was wrong.Readers will like the characters in the book. You'll learn a lot about life in the Philippines. It's a pleasant coming of age story. Enjoy.