Thank you to NetGalley for the E-Arc!
Absolutely fantastic book. this book was extremely well-written and impactful; They do a wonderful job of making the characters likable. You want them all to succeed and be happy and feel so strong for all of them. I think this book does a wonderful job of making you care about the events in the story and tackles some very difficult topics.
The representation in this book is amazing and I can see this being a huge hit among my friends and fellow readers. The queer romance is well done and the undocumented struggle in the story in this is a very real one for many people reading this makes your heartache. There is so much love and acceptance in this book. Can't wait for more by this author!

The romance between Ander and Santi was adorable. I also really enjoyed reading about Ander's murals and artistic process. It was also lovely to see such a supportive family with Ander's parents, sister, and abuela.

First, I want to say that I really loved this book. It did take me a while to finish it, but I am participating in NaNoWriMo so I wasn't necessarily always in the reading mood. However, I loved this book from beginning to end. Ander is so incredibly funny and lovable. I connected with them a lot in the queerness department. I enjoyed a lot of their banter with Santi. I think the author did an amazing job of conveying how serious immigration issues are and how ICE handles things. Books like these are so incredibly important. I loved that Ander and Santi's romance felt so natural and smooth. I think the only thing for me is I wish Ander and Santi were a little bit older. Of course, love can come at any age, but it's just a personal preference of mind. I highly recommend this book if you're looking for a queer Latinx romance.

Thank you so much to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, & Wednesday books for approving me for this ARC. I have no idea where to start for this review. I'm so happy I decided to do a "Netgalley November" because this book was everything. I absolutely loved " Fifteen Hundred Miles from the Sun" so I knew I had to request a copy for Ander & Santi Were Here. There wasn't any "sophomore slump" with this book. The book follows Ander's point of view in guiding his life through growing up, the hardship of living in San Antonio, Texas, falling in love, and following his dreams. Still, it also deals with heartache, being an undocumented immigrant, and dealing with ICE.

Honestly, this book made my heart so damn full. The love between Ander and Santi is very strong in this book, and they would absolutely do anything for each other and nothing will come in their way of loving each other. Even though Santi is an undocumented immigrant, it doesn't stop Ander from falling in love with Santi. It seems like they fall in love with him more and realizes he will do anything to protect him from any harm that comes his way. You feel for these characters. Even though I don't know how it feels to be put in that type of situation, all you can feel is heartbreak for these characters for what they go through. Ander stands up for the rights of Santi and being an undocumented immigrant and you can tell how passionate he is to put light on these types of situations. I love the LGBTQ+ aspect of it. I love that Ander is non-binary, and even though it's a part of them, it's not overly mentioned in any way. They are just non-binary and that's that. His family accepts him, his best friend accepts him, and there is no animosity between anyone because of it.

Overall, I absolutely love this book. Jonny Garza Villa handles all these topics very well and it's so well written you get lost in the story. You root for these characters like they're your family and you want what's best for everyone. I can't wait to see what's next from him. I know it's going to be amazing.

Ander & Santi Were Here by Jonny Garza Villa

⭐️⭐️⭐️

* Thank you to @netgalley and @stmartinspress for providing a digital copy of Ander & Santi Were Here in exchange of a honest review.

If you are looking for an inclusive, non-binary, LGTBQIA+ story with strong family/friends relationships and artsy vibes, this would be the perfect YA book for you! I enjoy the spanish words and expression throughout the novel and the family dynamic around the tacos restaurant. 🌮🌺

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ANDER AND SANTI WERE HERE is everything I could want in a contemporary book. I laughed, I cried (a lot) (maybe I'm still crying), I fell in love with love and with this work of art that goes straight to the heart and leaves an imprint there. The characters are unforgettable, the writing is stunning, and the pacing is perfect. I can't recommend this book enough, and loved every page.

I think this is a case of, it's not you, it's me. I can see where this book is tender, and heartfelt, and will speak to readers' need for lyrical and beautiful stories that touch their souls and pull at their heartstrings. For me? It was a little melodramatic and landed on the edge of cheesy.

What I did love: I feel like the author did a great job of creating characters who represented intersectional identities very well. I feel like the development of the romance had good pacing and was believable. The writing WAS undeniably GOOD, but just a little too flowery/purple for me at times.

Maybe I'm just not a YA romance girly. This book was good, not great, but I think the masses are going to LOVE!

This book's handling of such a vulnerable yet prevalent topic was so well done. The anger, sadness, happiness, and everything in between was shown through family and community values. I loved how supportive of a community Ander was able to have to do what he loves and be with Santi in any way he could. The characters all throughout the book were well developed and pulled my emotions in like ten different directions in the best way.

Going into this book I thought a lot about Aristotle and Dante and the similarities between both pairs of boys. I think this book was beautifully written and I loved it so much. This book made me feel so happy yet so heartbroken at the same time.

I received early access to this through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thanks!

I really enjoyed this book, I feared for the characters when they were threatened, and I was sad when they were sad. I enjoyed the artistic aspect of Ander and also appreciated the explanation of how to pronounce their name. I will admit I was pronouncing their name that same wrong way before it was explained.

I enjoyed the characters even the side ones, and loved how they added to the plot. However, I'll only be giving this 4 stars because of the ending. I try to keep my reviews spoiler free but I didn't enjoy how it all came together and where it all came together.

Overall, great book just not for me and my tastes. Thanks for giving me a chance to read this, and keep up the great work.

A NEW ALL TIME FAVORITE!

ANDER AND SANTI WERE HERE made me laugh hard and cry even harder—like I had to read passages to my sister out loud even though I knew she wouldn’t care and then got teary and snotty from sobbing. These characters are genuinely so funny even though they’re facing extremely difficult challenges. I LOVED the theme of belonging both in relation to immigration and in general to being a new adult trying to find where you fit in.

So well done! <3 <3 <3

Before we get into the review, I would like it to be known that I have lived in rural Pennsylvania for most of my life (at the time of writing this, I am in Germany for a year abroad, but yeah) and that I am not aware of knowing anyone who is undocumented. So I would always always always recommend looking to others’ reviews as well and seeing how this book impacts people who are directly affected. I am also not trans or nonbinary and so it might be good to look at reviews by those people as well. Anyway onto the actual review.

Wow this book really stabbed me in the heart. However I also thought it was really quite profound and was reminded that I need to look at my ways of allyship and also remember the humanity in people. Santi is not someone who finished high school or came as a small child, and is instead a young man who knowingly came in without a Visa. However he still deserves to exist in the US and be safe and without fear. The book really showed how ICE caused near-constant terror and hurt and the devastation that it brings.

Of course, before reading this book I knew that ICE was bad, but this really opened my perspective and showed me how things like this actually affected people. It impacted me a lot. So I would definitely recommend reading it for that.

At its core, this book is a love story. Or it would be a love story were it not for all of the terrible things standing in the way of Ander and Santi. So it’s a love story, but with a lot of discussions about ICE and immigration and everything, as that really impacted Ander and Santi’s relationship.

So this book is a love story and I adored that a lot. The way Ander and Santi addressed their relationship and connected with each other and just…the entire way they got together made me fall in love with the book more and more. I loved it a lot and I am so glad that I could read it. It was super cute and I enjoyed it a lot.

The book is set in California (factcheck) and in a Latinx community. I always love when books have dialogue in Spanish in them and so I was really happy that this one did as well. I also loved how Ander’s murals and art really made the entire setting seem more and more colorful and vibrant. It made me smile a lot.

Oh wow! The characters are last today! Saving the best I guess. Ander and Santi were the best and I was rooting for them every second of the way. I really connected with Ander and how they just wanted to make art, not art about their identity all the time, and not always art that other people thought they should make. That side plot made it very easy for me to connect with them and I loved it a lot.

Ander all in all was just a super well-rounded character. They struggled with things, had lots of passions, and conflict: inner-conflict and conflict with others. They seemed really human to me.

Santi seemed that way too. I loved him and how he coped with his struggles, however I would have enjoyed learning a bit more about him and his passions and joys, besides his tragic past. I am glad I got to learn that, but I wish I was able to learn a bit more about Santi too. But I liked him a lot!

And the supporting characters were wonderful too. Once again, I wish I knew a bit more about all of them (like, I really wanted to know how Lupe’s was founded because I felt like that would make me connect with more of the supporting characters, but I didn’t) but I really enjoyed them too. They did their best but made mistakes sometimes too, which I felt was quite human of them.

All in all, I really enjoyed this book and it reminded me of the work that still needs to be done in the US and made it more personal to me and I really appreciated that.

Thank you to Netgalley For providing me with a advanced readers copy of Ander and Santi Were Here by Jonny Garza Villa.

This was a amazing book! I really connected with the characters and the storyline. A AMAZING book!!

This book is so sweet and beautifully written. I love Santi and Ander. All of the people in their lives are so wonderful. They are so supportive of each other, and I love all the little things they do together or for each other. Their love story just makes me smile.
The story isn't only about beautiful art and a cute couple. There are also really heartbreaking moments where I felt the characters' helplessness. Santi has to deal with so much that no one ever should just because he wasn't born in the U.S. I am still processing this story because the people and relationships were so beautiful and heartwarming, but the story was also so heartbreaking and frustrating. Knowing this is the lived experience of so many people makes me want to give this book to everyone I know.
I loved Ander's family and friends, and I loved how they were also so supportive of Santi. . Ander's struggle with their art and what they wanted to do with their life was so relatable because it is easy to get so caught up in what people expect of you that you lose sight of your internal compass.
There were just so many things to love about the writing. It was so descriptive and clear yet it felt so soft and tender.

wow wow wow wow wow

What an incredible story of love, friendship, and finding oneself. This is a novel that will call readers to action and stick with them for a long time. Empathetic is the best word I’d use to describe it. Ander is such a self-aware and thoughtful narrator—Jonny Garza Villa is a master at taking complex emotions and blending them into the story seamlessly.

There is a lot to love about this book, but I think my favorite part is how confident and secure Ander is of their gender and sexuality. This is not a coming out story, which refreshing to have an MC who doesn’t have to question themselves in that way. It will be nice for young readers to meet Ander and have something to look forward to. Things may be difficult and confusing now, and some challenges will always exist, but we can live fruitful lives once we get past the coming out stage.

I appreciate the author’s note at the front. It sets up an expectation for what kind of story this will be, and I could sense Villa’s love and care throughout. I would suggest that they clarify in the author’s note that they are chicane. I looked that up on my own, but it would be helpful for readers to know that they have a similar identity to the main character.

My god, this book. I finished it over a week ago and still can't stop thinking about it. I fell in love with these characters almost instantly. They're easy to care about, to root for, and to be heartbroken by. I loved Fifteen Hundred Miles from the Sun by the same author, and Ander and Santi Were Here was at the top of my ARC wishlist. It truly did not disappoint.

This book and these characters will stay with me for a long time. The love is deep and all-consuming, and the circumstances aren't fair. It's a beautiful story that tells an even bigger one and as heart wrenching as that can be, Jonny Garza Villa still manages to make it funny and lighthearted at times. Reading this felt like getting to hold something sacred, even just for a little while.

Oh, and it's QUEER as HELL.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Ander and Santi Were Here was a wonderful and impactful book. It was light-hearted and enjoyable but also handled some heavy topics.
The setting and descriptions felt so vivid and bright. Everything was solid and felt like I was there painting with Ander in the streets of San Antonio.
The characters and how they developed were lovely. Ander was a good perspective to read from. They had an awesome family and Chachi was great.
One thing I wish was better was the development of Santi’s character. We don’t know much about him compared to everybody else. He fell very flat. What things does he like? Hobbies? We just get so little about him even though he is a main character.
This was a good book and I enjoyed reading it. I really love the ending and if you were thinking of reading this book, definitely do.

I was so grateful to be offered an E-ARC of this novel. As soon as I heard that Jonny Garza Villa was coming out with another novel, I immediately pre-ordered it. And it was everything I could’ve dreamed of and more.
The love that grows between Ander and Santi is vast and beautiful. Honestly, the entire book is beautiful, even when I’m crying reading it. Every character in this book has their own story and so much heart that I couldn’t put it down.
This heart-wrenching and heartwarming story deserves all the hype and love it can possibly get.

I've been trying to decide how I will review this book for almost a month now, and I'm coming up blank. I was a huge fan of the authors first book, but I really just didn't click with this one and I'm not sure why. I liked the relationship and the story, but just wasn't a fan of the writing at all and I'm not sure why. Perhaps some can be attributed to the first person narration, which I never enjoy, but the writing style also felt just a bit dense, and not broken up much which made reading feel like a bit of a chore. I won't be publicly reviewing this because Im having such a hard time vocalizing my critiques, I think this just comes down to "not for me."

Ander and Santi Were Here, by Jonny Garza Villa, gave me a glimmer of hope for the future. The dreamy LGBTQ+ love story and the passionate belief in human rights for immigrants spoke to my heart. There are good people out there in the world (both real and fictional), passionate people who are caring for each other and being the change we need. When the world feels like it is burning around us, a story like this helps me to believe that there still might be a chance for our society after all.

Ander is a nonbinary teen in San Antonio creating amazing murals and working part time in their parents' local Mexican restaurant. They are completing an arts residency with plans to go to an elite college the following year. Santi, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, begins working at the restaurant, and puts a slight wrench in those plans.

I enjoyed so many things about the novel. I loved that Ander's family accepts them fully -- their being gay and nonbinary were not an issue or one of the "problems" of the novel, which was refreshing. The use of Spanish was joyful and generous, and the author did not pander to English speakers (as in, they did not interpret every Spanish section). People have dictionaries and internet; we can look things up.

The author also made me THINK in all caps, about the difference between caring about a cause like the plight of undocumented immigrants, and experiencing a friend, family member, or loved one living in fear of ICE. It's easy to say that we care about these issues, and so much harder to truly understand the trauma people face in these situations. I'm so far removed from it, and Jonny Garza Villa helped me to better see and understand someone like Santi's situation. Oh! And JGV used the gender neutral Spanish pronoun elle, which I have read about but never really seen used IRL. As in, instead of hijo (son) or hija (daughter), Ander is called "hije" by their family. That was fun.

This also may have been the most realistic love story in the history of novels. Two attractive, young, single people like each other and....they get together. It was delightfully straightforward.

Thank you, JGV, for writing such a beautiful love story, and thanks also to NetGalley for the
eARC in exchange for an honest review. I give it 10 stars.