"I liked it"... but I'm not blind to the narrative flaws, so I'll officially call this a 3.5. 
 Let me start with the disclaimer that this book is not in my genre; I actually picked it up in an effort to keep reading broadly, but I haven't really read... any (?) immigrant fiction in recent years, so I'm not going to even try to compare this to other works in the field. 
 That said, I found it interesting (perhaps because I have nothing to compare it to...). It was a story as much about the adult immigrant experience as it is about the young adult live story, and I appreciated the interludes with other residents of the apartment complex. 
 And yet, as touching as it all is, it still manages to feel somehow flat. In addition, the author goes out of her way to grab at the reader's heartstrings. There's no real subtlety here to the prose. Finally, the ending... doesn't feel like an ending. 
 All in all, though, it's not not bad. I don't feel like I lost anything by reading it, certainly. I do get the feeling that there might be better treatment of this subject by others in the field, but I don't mind this one at all.