FLORES AND MISS PAULA, by Melissa Rivero

Melissa Rivero’s sophomore novel, “Flores and Miss Paula,” is a familiar, if uneven, tale of generational disapproval and resentment. We meet Paula Flores, a Peruvian-born, religious mother, and Monica, her millennial daughter, who browses hookup apps and juggles enormous student loan debt. The two have one thing in common: They’re grieving the loss of the family’s father and husband, Martin Flores, who died of cancer three years earlier.

As uneasy roommates in the Brooklyn apartment the family has rented for 20 years, Paula and Monica carefully tend an altar set up in Martin’s memory. One morning, not long after learning that their lease won’t be renewed, Monica finds what she thinks is a petition to the saints hidden in the family shrine. It turns out to be a note in her mother’s handwriting, asking for forgiveness. Monica has long suspected that Paula was disloyal to her father; this slip of paper seems to provide confirmation.

But Monica doesn’t confront Paula; communication isn’t their forte. The two women alternate chapters as narrators, and it’s clear from the beginning — maybe too clear — that the narrative arc will certainly include a mother-daughter journey toward better understanding of each other.

But the main focus of Rivero’s plot is the women’s very different professional identities. At the Bowl, the struggling fish and aquarium start-up where Monica works, she’s called “Flores,” thanks to a surfeit of Monicas on staff. (“It was better than being known as Finance Monica.”) At DollaBills, the neighborhood store where Paula is a clerk, she’s known as Miss Paula.