Olga Dies Dreaming / Xochitl Gonzalez - 2.5** rounded UP

[Book Concierge]

NOTE: This would fit "immigration" but I actually read it in Oct 2021. For some reason my review isn't stored here, however. Who knows what happened to it. But here it is again.




Olga Dies Dreaming - Xochitl Gonzalez
2.5*** rounded up

I received an ARC from Flatiron books. Book’s scheduled publication date is Jan 2022.

From the book jacket: It’s 2017, and Olga and her brother Pedro “Prieto” Acevedo, are gold-faced names in their hometown of New York. Prieto is a popular congressman representing their gentrifying Latinx neighborhood in Brooklyn, while Olga is the tony wedding planner for Manhattan’s power brokers. Despite their alluring public lives, behind closed doors things are far less rosy.

My reactions
I really wanted to like this. I’d heard the author in a virtual event and felt her enthusiasm for the story and for her characters. I liked that her focus was on two successful siblings and their rise to those positions, despite parents who abandoned them and left them in the care of their loving grandmother. I liked Gonzalez’s stated focus on social issues of gentrification and the resulting displacement of families struggling to find affordable housing in an urban landscape, not to mention the changes to the neighborhoods that the influx of dollars bring. And on the personal issue of living up to expectations – of our parents, our friends, our community, ourselves – and the struggle to find one’s own path.

But I found a book with rather unlikeable characters that I just never quite connected to. I felt the “bad guys” in the book were the easy stereotypical “big business” villains. (And, yes, I know they exist and do great damage in the name of profits, but still…) And the whole intrigue with the Acevedo siblings’ mother – a revolutionary living in the mountains of Puerto Rico – never quite clicked with me either.

I did like the relationship between Prieto and Olga, though I didn’t really warm to either one of them. And I really liked Matteo and how he balanced Olga’s temperament. This is a mature man, with flaws, but still open and honest and willing to talk!

LINK to my review

[Joy D]

I had similar feelings about this one.

[Book Concierge]

Everyone in my Hispanic book club loved it. The other five people in our group rated it 4 or 5 stars.