Colleen Mondor Reviews The Girl, the Ring, & the Baseball Bat by Camille Gomera-Tavarez
The Girl, the Ring, & the Baseball Bat, Camille Gomera-Tavarez (Levine Querido 978-1-646-14265-1, $19.99, 391pp, hc) February 2024. Cover by Dotun Abeshinbioke.
The Girl, the Ring, & the Baseball Bat by Camille Gomera-Tavarez is about navigating high school, finding true friends (and romance), and a magic jacket, magic ring, and magic baseball bat. (I’m not going to lie, while all of them are cool, the baseball bat really rocks.) Sisters Rosie and Caro are chafing under their conservative mother’s rules while also struggling against the lowered expectations of their high school’s administration. Caro is dismissed as a ‘‘bad girl’’ and Rosie, who is set on obtaining a recommendation to a prestigious high school program, finds herself constantly and casually overlooked as not quite good enough. Zac is a newcomer, sorely missing his grandmother, conflicted over the death of his mother, and desperate to fit in but not sure how. Finally, there is Ash, a former tough girl (and foil of Caro’s), who is determined to accept everything about herself regardless of parental expectations. After a brief chapter providing a bit of backstory, the novel takes off with a look at one tumultuous year in all of their lives. Rosie and Caro learn some important family history, Ash and Zach bond as true friends, and all four embark on an adventure to uncover nefarious activities among their school administration. In the end they accomplish many things big and small and also bash a lot of stuff with the baseball bat. (That part is absurdly satisfying.)
Absent the magical objects, The Girl, the Ring, & the Baseball Bat follows a traditional coming-of-age pattern. Over the course of the novel, Rosie and Caro find a way to better understand themselves and each other, while also learning a great deal about their mother (and largely absent father). Less is revealed about Zach and Ash’s home lives, but enough to discern their struggles as they form a friendship that is momentarily imperiled by the magical rings. (Valuable life lesson: Do not play with love-based magic, it never goes as planned.) While the narrative shifts among several of the protagonists, it is never confusing as to who the reader is following, although I had occasional issues with timing and location which took me a moment to figure out. (At one point Caro travels to the Dominican Republic to visit her father, which introduces a whole host of family drama. I’ll give a two-word clue: new stepmother.)
The bigger plot issue is the overarching mystery as to what is going on at the high school. Gomera-Tavarez suggests a lot, but the climax felt rushed to me and the fallout seemed left to the imagination. The more established storyline is that of Rosie and Caro’s mother and her murky past. As it is tied to the magical objects, there is much more to consider there and the author gives readers lots of opportunity to think about what she is hiding and why. I would have liked to see more about the problems at school.
The Girl, the Ring, & the Baseball Bat is a quick read and the characters are especially enjoyable. Gomera-Tavarez peppers the dialogue with Spanish, which seems to me to be easy to navigate via context for English-only readers but should also have strong appeal for those who are bilingual. Anyone with complicated parents (i.e., all of us) will identify with some of the covered family issues and did I mention the magic baseball bat? The origins of the magical objects are a bit murky but who cares; mostly they are just very cool. We all could use friends like this group of teens, and reading how they come together is a nice way to spend an afternoon.
This review and more like it in the April 2024 issue of Locus.
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