“It was 118 degrees in Silver Springs, Arizona, and the Gila River was thick with algae.”

From Tehlor Kay Mejia’s Paola Santiago and the River of Tears.

After a lifetime of listening to her mother’s ghost stories, twelve-year-old Paola has learned to turn to science for answers to the mysterious in her life.  Pao is enjoying summer vacation with her two best friends, Dante and Emma, and the trio often spend their days by the river, despite Pao’s mother’s constant fear of the evil ghost La Llorona.  When Emma disappears, Pao and Dante are left wondering what happened to their friend.  While the adults and police think Emma’s disappearance is connected to a kidnapper in Mesa, Paola is unable to forget the strangely dark, magical dream that she had the day before Emma vanished.  As Pao continues to have terrible dreams about Emma’s disappearance, a river, and a girl named Ondina, she feels stuck until Dante’s grandmother, gives them a slipper, a shopping bag, and a flashlight from Pao’s childhood, before telling them to flee before a strange, magical glow overtakes the apartment.  With no other ideas, Pao and Dante head to the river, but once they cross through a nearby cactus field and they stumble into a place on the edge of a magical world where Pao realizes that the nonsense stories her mother loves might all be true.  When they stumble across Los Niños de la Luz, a group of lost-children-turned-monster-hunters led by Naomi and Marisa, Pao is unsure of who to trust.  However, as they face off against chupacabras, disembodied hands, and ghost children called Ahogado, Pao realizes that she’ll have to look for Emma in a rift between this world and the magical one… before it’s too late.

This mythology/fantasy adventure focuses on the legends of Latin America. There is sometimes an assumption of previous knowledge that makes some elements choppy.  Overall, Paola Santiago and the River of Tears is an interesting series opener that will leave readers looking forward to the next book.