Readers of Lucky Broken Girl, Hurricane Child, and The House on Mango Street, will love this debut middle grade novel about finding sanctuary with friends who understand the enormous changes life can throw at you when you’re 11.

What Elisa, Lucia, and Alice see–and judge–of each other from the outside is drastically different from how each girl feels inside. They attend the same classes in the same New York City middle school, but no one knows that Elisa is trying to navigate the bewildering asylum process having just arrived from El Salvador; or that Lucia, who also speaks Spanish and brims with self-confidence, is caught in the middle of her parents’ heartbreaking divorce; or that Alice, who appears to be a rebel in combat boots, carries the burden of her mother’s progressing cancer.

Narrated by each girl in alternating chapters, City Girls captures the vulnerability of being a middle schooler and the relief and joy of finding friendship where you least expect it.