Sep 26

Sep 26 Catalina

About the book

Author: Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Publisher: One World

More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the review.

Buy and support indie bookstores (+ I earn a small commission):
Bookshop.org (print) | Libro.fm (audio)

My Review

Everyone (including me) loved The Undocumented Americans, so I was already curious about this book. Then it landed on the National Book Award longlist, which bumped it all the way to the top of my TBR. Overall I liked but didn’t love it, although it’s mostly just bad matchmaking between me and this book because I just don’t love novels about chaotically messy main characters.

That said, it’s definitely got merits. Karla Cornejo Villavicencio has written one of the sharpest, most vivid characters I’ve read in a long time. She herself is one of Harvard’s first undocumented graduates (like Catalina), and surely she drew from her own experiences, but it never feels like she’s just writing about herself. Catalina could have walked off the page. She’s flawed and zingy and felt so, so true to her age (a college freshman).

I will say that the storytelling style felt a little essayist/reportage, which actually makes sense for Catalina’s first-person POV, but can be a little tough to push through. But for that reason, I thought this book worked really well on audio! It was easy to swallow the book down whole in that format.

If you like coming of age stories, especially with excellent Latina representation and messy main characters, definitely give this book a shot.