Fantastic family epic with interesting characters, and some deep philosophical issues. The discussions of what constitutes real love were particularly interesting and poignant. Would definitely recommend.

4 stars

A unique novel about family, love, identity, and belonging. It’s funny, it’s sad, it’s irreverent, & a lot happens.

[What I liked:]

•Olga & Prieto’s sibling bond is very touching, as is Olga’s relationship with Matteo. It was hard for me to like Olga, but I started to after seeing her through the eyes of her loved ones. There is a lot of depth in this story, especially in the family relationships, as messy as many of those are.

•Wow, the cast of characters in this book is great! Even the side characters like Olga’s annoying cousin and the rapper dude are memorable.

•The themes of identity (sexuality, ethnicity, family relationships, finding a career with meaning, etc.) give so much depth to this story, & are developed in narratively satisfying ways.


[What I didn’t like as much:]

•Olga is a hard MC to like. She’s selfish, untrustworthy, materialistic, & very cynical. She does have some character growth towards the end, but it was barely enough for me to sort of like her.

•Certain elements of the story (namely the terrorist cell & the fact that the FBI wasn’t on top of something that well organized & well armed) were hard to swallow.

CW: sexual assault, terrorist, homophobia, blackmail, suicide, child abuse/neglect, substance abuse

[I received an ARC ebook copy from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. Thank you for the book!]

Rating: 4.25 stars

A great contemporary fiction to start off the year! Olga and her brother, Pedro, are very complex characters who go through real challenges. I loved that the audio had 2 separate narrators for Olga and Pedro as well as flashback chapters in the form of letters from their mother. It was very interesting to see what a hold their mother and her opinions had over both of their lives even though she had been absent for most of it. The ending was satisfying and I liked that both Olga and Pedro seemed free and lighter, like they had finally lifted all of their secrets and hurt.

This book tackles gentrification, family secrets, political corruption, and the power held by the elite and is an excellent read or listen. Would definitely recommend for contemporary fiction lovers!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ALC in exchange for an honest review.

Olga Dies Dreaming was a great contemporary fiction that discovers who we really are, the history and issues Puerto Rican's face on the world stage, and finding the person that we are meant to become. Olga is a wedding planner, her brother Beto is a politician, and her mother left when she was very small to devote herself to the cause of liberation in Puerto Rico. This book explores many family issues that come up as Olga is pressured into doing things to support her mother that do not support herself. Olga slowly learns to put herself first. There are themes in this book of family dysfunction, romance, where we come from, where we are going, and learning who we can really become if only we start with some introspection. 5/5 stars.

First off, congrats to the author for such a well written debut novel. The topics covered in this book are heavy and meaningful, and in my opinion it was well done. I very much enjoyed Olga's character and her constant, crazy dilemmas. This was not a book that I would typically read, but it caught my eye as a Book of the Month, and I was so grateful to have the opportunity to listen to it. I enjoyed the audiobook very much, and I would highly recommend it.

𝘖𝘭𝘨𝘢 𝘋𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘋𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘨 by Xochitl Gonzalez was a slow-burn bombshell. Even at its slowest when I briefly wondered if I should continue, there was something spellbinding about Gonzalez’s writing that just didn’t let me go, and I pushed through, so happy now that I did. And if you get a chance to listen to the audiobook, take it. The narration is flawlessly done.

There was so much going on that my head is still spinning, but it was all woven together so well that nothing felt fragmented or missed. The history of Puerto Rico that was absolutely never taught in school, multiple timelines, rich in Puerto Rican culture, an unbreakable sibling bond between Olga and Prieto, the beautiful rawness between Olga and Matteo, Olga’s family, queerness, Olga herself and everything that happens to her, everything she experiences, natural disasters, drug addiction, grief, sexual assault, intersectional feminism, heinous and purposeful government neglect, revolution…and so much more. So much. The storytelling in this book was phenomenal, character-driven with compelling and relevant plot, the story itself deeply layered and beautifully, heartbreakingly, boldly told.

There’s so much to say, but I don’t want to give anything away, so I’ll end with this: 𝘖𝘭𝘨𝘢 𝘋𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘋𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘨 will stir you, rock you to your core, ensnare you with its leisurely pace and then emotionally obliterate you when you least expect it, like a powerful sleeper agent. I advise being aware of trigger warnings, and highly recommend it!

𝙄 𝙬𝙖𝙨 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙫𝙞𝙙𝙚𝙙 𝙖𝙣 𝙚𝘼𝙍𝘾 𝙘𝙤𝙥𝙮 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙗𝙤𝙤𝙠 𝙗𝙮 𝙉𝙚𝙩𝙂𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙚𝙮 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙁𝙡𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙧𝙤𝙣 𝘽𝙤𝙤𝙠𝙨 (𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙠-𝙮𝙤𝙪!). 𝘼𝙡𝙡 𝙤𝙥𝙞𝙣𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙚𝙭𝙥𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙨𝙚𝙙 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙫𝙤𝙡𝙪𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙧𝙮 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙢𝙮 𝙤𝙬𝙣.

I really, truly enjoyed this read. It was a rollercoaster of emotions. I loved the different points of view, though I preferred Olga's pop best. She had so much character and was as bold and colorful as the cover of the book. Her brother had so much to unravel for himself. Both really suffered from the abandonment of their mother and let it sour even the best of their relationships. It was an incredible journey to see them both grow and become the people they chose to be and not what was chosen for them. This book is full of Puerto Rican culture, family drama, deeply buried secrets, finding love, and loving yourself. The narrators did a great job in this audiobook. Thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to this great book in exchange for a review.

Olga Dies Dreaming was a title I have been seeing on Must Anticipated 2022 Releases. Olga is a wedding planner, living in New York, struggling with working with her WASPy clientele, planning her cousin's wedding, and her less than compelling romantic relationships. While that is where we meet Olga, this novel explores the ideas of Latinx identity, family abandonment, and purpose.

What I liked: Olga's journey of self-discovery, complexity of her brother's journey as a politician and closeted gay man, and the resolution Olga's family provided.

Rounded down from 4.5

Olga and Pietro Acevedo, born and raised in Sunset Park, have both worked tirelessly to succeed, Olga running her own wedding planning business, catering to the upper echelon of NY society, Pietro as a congressmen representing south Brooklyn. They have faced a number of obstacles, their mother leaving them to dedicate her life to Puerto Rican independence, their father dying after a battle with HIV, and both of them find themselves at a loss as to how to find and keep meaningful relationships in their lives. Olga Dies Dreaming finds them at a point where both of them, now in their 40s, must decide how the want to move forward and navigate through their identities and the world around them.

I thoroughly enjoyed the plot of this book but WOW did the prose sing. The characters jumped off the page. I was fortunate enough to receive an advanced audiobook, courtesy of the publisher and Netgalley, and the narration was fantastic. This is an excellent debut and sure to be a favorite of many to start off 2022.

OLGA DIES DREAMING was a surprise to me. The cover gave me a mysticism or historical fiction feel, but this is a very contemporary story about a young woman's life in NYC and how her choices, relationships and situations have been shaped by her parents and the family's roots in Puerto Rico.
There were moments and people I really enjoyed and cared about in this book, including Olga who is a complex character that is unabashedly honest and doesn't feel compelled to conform to most people's expectations. I liked the mechanism of the letters from their mother, which provide tremendous insight into why Olga and her brother are who they are. However, I felt like there was just too too too much to this story. I would have liked a more focused story on Olga and her relationship hang ups. I felt this book didn't quite have a clear identity: is it contemporary romance? women's fiction? political or cultural story?
Overall, I enjoyed it, but it wouldn't be the first I'd recommend this year.
The narrators were very good- I particularly enjoyed the woman, and a story with names and references made in Spanish and re: Puerto Rico are enhanced hearing them read out loud.

Olga and Prieto Acevedo have a complicated family. Their father died from addiction/AIDS when they were young and their mother left them to be raised by their grandma in America so that she could join a radical resistance movement in Puerto Rico. Now the siblings are older with troubles of their own. Olga runs a successful wedding planning busy that isn't always on the up-and-up. While Prieto is a young Congressman in Brooklyn that wants to do well for the common folk, but has secrets of his own that he desperately wants to keep hidden. Each of them is still being manipulated by their mother via the letters that she sends to them. When Hurricane Maria devastates the island of Puerto Rico, the siblings are forced make some important choices on how they want to live.

It was interesting to learn a bit more about American politics and their effects on Puerto Rico. Olga was unlikeable at times but she felt real and I liked that about her. Though primarily a character-driven novel, the plot did not disappoint either. I really enjoyed the activist elements to the story. The ending felt a bit rushed, but I did enjoy the conclusions for each of the characters. I listened to this one as an audiobook and thought that the narrators Almarie Guerra, Inés del Castillo, Armando Riesco did a great job!

An excellent debut novel by Xochitl Gonzalez. Special thanks to Flatiron Books and Netgalley for the Advanced Listener's Copy.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Five Stars for Xochitl Gonzalez in her vivid, hilarious debut Olga Dies Dreaming.
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Pub Date: 4 Jan 2022
Audio Narrated by Almarie Guerra; Armando Riesco; Inés del Castillo

This was one of my most anticipated reads for 2022, and it did NOT disappoint.

As a Chicago to Brooklyn transplant, I deeply appreciate the importance of a neighborhood as a character all its own in this novel. A love letter to Brooklyn, the humor in this novel is ALIVE. It is beaming, vivacious and sharp just like the borough.

The characters are engaging and as a self-made woman, I really related to our protagonist Olga--the life she has built for herself. I just devoured this great book as I knew I would.

I am thrilled it is already being adapted for television, with the talents of Aubrey Plaza and Jesse Williams no less.

Can't wait to see what more Xochitl Gonzalez has in store for us all!

Thank you to @flatiron_books @macmillan.audio @netgalley & @xochitltheg for the ARC and audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

#olgadiesdreaming #books #humor #bookstagram #bookclubreads #bookclub #booklover #reading #ilovebooks #currentlyreading #bookreview #book #bookstagrammer #brooklyn #bookrecommendations #netgalley

This was an almost perfect novel. The characters were fantastic, full of flaws as well as a lot of good. The predicament of Puerto Rican residents and their status as not-quite-American-despite-being-American was fraught with discontent, identity uncertainty, and the question of whether the great American ideal is for everyone. The book is also full of minorities who are succeeding regardless of gender, race, or sexual orientation. The wicked, money-loving, unscrupulous white businessmen were thoroughly ridiculed. Olga Acevedo, who manages a high-end wedding planning agency, and her brother Prieto, a New York politician, were the two primary protagonists. They are both struggling with their life choices as well as the issue of their mother, who is heading a hidden community planning for Puerto Rico's independence. There is a lot of debate over the best approach to raise Puerto Ricans' living standards. The abrupt finish shifted the pace of the book considerably, and the numerous plot lines that I had been following were wrapped up in a few words, which let the book down for me.

A book by a Hawkeye?! Of course I want to read it!

Olga Dies Dreaming is a book with two complex main characters with very compelling story lines. The book is well written and does a great job at incorporating political and cultural themes into the working and personal lives of the characters.

Everything about this book was more than expected. Partly because I didn’t know much about the story going in, but I was quickly caught up in the dramatics of Olga and Preito. Gonzalez’s style was vibrant and character driven! This is a work of fiction but it was still eye opening in regards to the dynamics following America’s colonization of Puerto Rico. What also stood out was the awful treatment those who live on the island following Hurricane Maria by America.

This book has a slower pace but listening to the audio version was a great fit for me. It is a fantastic debut novel!

4 Stars!

Thank you to @macmillianaudio @netgalley and @xochitltheg for a copy of this audiobook in exchange for my honest opinion.

I’m giving this a strong 3 stars, maybe even 3.5…
I feel like this book had a lot of things that I like in books; diverse characters, politics, activism. But overall I found it quite slow. Like, the first 3/4 of the book are setting everything in place for the last 1/4 where there’s actually some excitement. I also found the flow of the book a bit challenging because it jumps around in time and is told from 4 different POVs (Olga, her brother Prieto, the very aptly named Dick, and then letters to Olga and Pietro from their absent mother).
Olga and Prieto are both Puerto Rican, though born in the continental US. There is a lot of interesting discussions about what it means to claim or feel connection to a culture that you have been geographically removed from, and how privilege plays into that as well.
Overall, I’m glad that I read this, as I don’t think I’ve read anything that centres so much on Puerto Ricans, their culture and politics. I did have some background knowledge about Puerto Rico’s political situation, which is pretty fucking terrible, so I did find it interesting to expand on that knowledge through this book.

Olga is one talented Wedding Planner. She gets the customers the items they want, the service they demand and the event they dream of. She also happens to line her pockets with extra products and maybe some extra cash along the way. Olga, you see, is a complicated woman with a complicated backstory. The child of revolutionaries, one lost too soon and one who chose the revolution over her children. Her brother, Prieto is also a man of many faces, his main one as a Democratic Congressman in New York. What lengths will he go to keep his true identity and sexuality in the shadows?

Olga and Prieto’s mother is always watching, but from where no one seems to know. What they do know is occasionally they will get letters, often critical, that they don’t share with anyone. We as readers get to see some of these letters interspersed within the chapters. While Puerto Rico is being devastated by a hurricane the siblings must face their life choices. They must face their family, friends and co-workers and decide what path they want to take going forward.

This was one of my top reads of 2021. I loved the complexity of Olga. I loved the side-characters and I loved learning a bit about the political battles that are being waged in Puerto Rico.

I alternated between listening to this book and reading a physical copy. I loved the narration with the accents and personality and do definitely recommend the audio version if you are an audiobook lover.

Thank you to Macmillan audio and NetGalley for a copy of the audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

Olga Dies Dreaming is the fantastic debut novel by Xóchitl González. This book discusses social issues in the Puerto Rican community in the wake of Hurricane Maria. While Olga gets the title of the story, there are so many other characters that are important, likeable and powerful in the story.

Publication Date: January 4, 2022
Happy Pub Day!!!

Also heard this is going to be a TV series on Hulu and I cannot wait.

Synopsis:
Set in 2017, Olga and her brother Pedro, “Pierto” are both in the public eye. Olga for being a sought after wedding planner who sometimes lands a spot on day time TV morning shows and Pierto as a congressman. But, in their private life, both siblings have struggles they are dealing with individually. Both still have trauma from their mother’s fast departure from the family over 27 years ago. Blanca, a Young Lord-turned-radical left her children to fight for political causes in Puerto Rico and other countries in need.

With Hurricane Maria causing destruction on the island, Olga Dies Dreaming deals with political and social issues as a country and within a family. Can Olga and Pierto weather the storm in every sense of the term?

Thoughts
-A Must Read Book!!!
-Dives deep into the struggles that American citizens are dealing with on the island of Puerto Rico.
-Political and Social issues addressed.
-A thought provoking book that I devoured!

If you loved What Storm, What Thunder (another 5-star book for me!) this is definitely a book you will enjoy. And if you haven’t read either please do yourself the favor and read BOTH!

Five huge bright stars for this amazing debut novel by Xóchitl González.

Thank you to Net Galley and Macmillian Audio for this audio copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Audiobook was amazing and I would highly recommend reading this book in that format, if possible. There are multiple narrators which helps set the tone for Olga and Pierto.

Olga and her brother, Pedro live in New York and are descendants from their mother, a die-hard Puerto Rican who left them years ago to pursue justice in Puerto Rico. Every decision that Olga and her brother Pedro make in their personal and professional lives are a result of their mother. At the beginning, I found Olga to be annoying, but she grew on me as I got further into reading. Olga, a wedding planner for the rich is looked down upon by some because she ‘is just a maid for the rich’. Olga constantly has an internal fight about decisions that she will make and what others will think on the outside. Pedro, a politician has secrets of his own while he represents the Latinx in Brooklyn. The letters from their mother sprinkled throughout the book, were long and depressing and not all of them were needed. The beginning first bored me, then intrigued me, the middle lost me and by the end it was a little too nicely wrapped up. Overall, as a character driven novel, it was slow moving and didn’t pull me in as much as I would have liked it to. This was a contemporary story about class, racism, politics, gender, equity, and family.

Olga Dies Dreaming is an ambitious debut novel that follows Olga, a 40 year old celebrity wedding planner and Brooklyn native as she grapples with her abandonment issues, her identity as a Puerto Rican American that at times does not seem to fit in neatly with her social climber status, and her complicated relationships with her family and her partners.

I will start by saying that if you do decide to pick this book as your first book of 2022, DO IT ON AUDIO! Seriously. It's a multiple narrator audiobook, and all of the narrators - Almarie Guerra, Ines del Castillo, and Armando Riesco have done a phenomenal job brining Olga's, her mother, Blanca's, and her brother, Prieto's voices to life. This truly was an extraordinary experience and I honestly don't think I would have enjoyed this book quite as much otherwise.

Overall Olga Dies Dreaming is a great way to start the year. It does have some flaws (more on this later), but it is beaming with very relevant social commentary, yet is an easy and fast read, and the romance part of it is quite fun. You gotta give the author, Xochitl Gonzales, a credit - it is not easy to write a book like Olga Dies Dreaming!

Here are just some of the tough topics discussed:
1. The colonization of PR and the ongoing struggle for liberation. (Personally I had to Google a lot about organizations such as Young Lords, and other Puerto Rican freedom fighters - that is always a plus for me! I learned a lot about the topic that was largely unfamiliar to me!)
2. Neighborhood gentrification
3. Racism and inequality in America
4. Abandonment by a parent
6. LGBTQ+ rights in the context of LatinX culture
7. Suicide
8. Testing HIV positive and how it affects the individual and the entire family
9. Feminism and following your dream in a largly patriarchal culture
10. Aftermath of hurricane Maria, and how US failed PR

One of my favorite topics explored in the book is the idea of women giving up their traditional roles to pursue their "calling", and how they are judged (HINT: very differently from men) by society. This in my opinion gave off some major The Dutch House vibes. Don't get me wrong these two books are VERY different. However, this one part, the "absent mothers" is similar. One of my favorite moments in The Dutch House is when Mauve is having this conversation with Danny who is so bitter and angry with their mother. Danny is shocked at the fact that Maeve seems to have forgiven their mother for abandoning them. Danny and Maeve’s mother left because she did not feel that being a mother, a wife, and a mistress of a big house was her calling. She felt that taking care of the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, India was her calling. When Danny expresses that he has the right to be angry, Maeve keeps stressing out the fact that Danny is only enraged because of his preconceived notion of how a woman in their mother’s position should behave. Maeve brings up Odysseus who left his family, and his responsibilities as a king of Ithaca for 10 years to pursue his calling. He is widely considered one of the greatest heroes of all time. It is inconceivable that a woman who left her own family and so blatantly chose not to come back for a decade could have been called anything but a selfish, self-centered person, no matter how strong her calling was or how much good she has done. In Olga Dies Dreaming, Blanca, Olga and Prieto's mom left them and their father, because she felt that her calling was to fight against colonization and oppression. This event took place decades after the events in The Dutch House, however, the reaction that her abandonment elicited was very much the same.

Unfortunately, the topic described above was not developed to my satisfaction in Olga. I do not want to give too much away, so I will just say that the idea was great, but instead of making this book an anthem to feminism, the author chose a route which, in my opnion, vilified Blanca to the point that the beforementioned society's opinion of her ended being validated. I was a bit confused by that to be honest. Why create such a great controversial character and then make her a borderline villain? What have we learned from that?

I had few other qualms with the book. Specifically with the ending. It was too much of a "happy ending" for me in many respects. Also the summary at the end of the books was way too extensive. There is SO MUCH information that the author dumps on us in the finale - there is enough material for another book there I swear.

The whole "working for Russian mafia" thing was kind of silly. I mean...💁😂you don't need to be Russian to know that you just CAN'T get in and out of something like this whenever it works for you! Girl...NO. Just no.😂

The father daughter conversation at the very end was very sweet, touching, and emotional. It really made me think about our perception of ourselves vs what our loved ones usually think of us and how we often judge ourselves too harshly. However, I am not sure I was down for how one of the main character's irresponsible sexual behavour (namely not using protection) has not been adressed in the book. Are we supposed to be OK with just shaking the finger at him for being naughty?

Dick's character was such a stereotypical "old, rich, white, guy" that it was almost laughable. All the parts about him were terribly boring. Major eye roll. I would have loved for him to be a bit more multidimensional, or perhaps even, I don't know, have ONE interesting trait? As is, however, he is just so pale, male and stale that I have a hard time believing someone like Olga could have been interested in him byond one night stand. Not even for self validation.

And most importantly, the major, MAJOR topic of rape has not been dealt with at all, swept under the rug, and everyone ...well, just moved on? Which is byond infuriating, and not believable AT ALL.

All in all Olga Dies Dreaming is a great book. Not perfect, but still very impressive for a debut novel. I will definitely pick up more books from this author!

Thank you Mcmillanaudio and Netgalley for my advanced listening copy, and Flatiron Books for my ARC. Olga Dies Dreaming will be available on audio and in print tomorrow, on January 4th, 2022.

Rating: 3.5 stars

This book was even more delightful than I anticipated! I loved the vibrant writing style, flawed and fully-developed characters, and the intimate storyline. Just wonderful!