I'd rather burn than bloom

"Some girls call their mother their best friend. Marisol Martin? She could never relate. She and her mom were forever locked in an argument with no beginning and no end. Clothes, church, boys -- no matter the topic, Marisol always felt like there was an unbridgeable gap between them. But when her mother dies suddenly, Marisol is left with no one to fight. Her dad seems completely lost, and worse, baffled by Marisol's attempts to connect with her mother's memory through her Filipino culture. Her brother, Bernie, is retreating further and further into himself. And when Marisol sleeps with her best friend's boyfriend -- and then punches said best friend in the face -- she's left alone, with nothing but a burning anger and nowhere for it to go. Marisol is determined to stay angry. But then she forms a new friendship, and with someone who just might understand. Reluctantly, Marisol starts to open up to other people, and to the possibility that there's something else on the other side of that anger -- something more to who she is, and who she could be." -- Jacket flap.