Thank you to NetGalley for an Advanced Reader's Copy (ARC) of this book. From reading the description, I felt this book was right up my alley. Unfortunately, I was incorrect and it just wasn't for me. I would have DNF'd this book if I didn't have an ARC. My policy for ARC's is that I always write an honest review, and I feel I can't do that accurately if I don't read the whole book. Sometimes this works out in my favor, as I end up enjoying the book, but that didn't happen in this case. The reasons it wasn't for me were I felt all of the characters were unlikeable, and I didn't connect with any of them and wasn't invested in finding out what happened. This was disappointing as from the description of the book I felt like this one would definitely tug at my heart.

I did wonder how much of this book was based on personal experiences of the author than fiction, and my heart goes out to anyone who finds themselves in the position of Catalina. My views on the topic of immigration have changed over the years through reading and the experiences of relatives. I'm sure there are many who will love this book, I just wasn't one of them. This review is also posted on Goodreads.

After really enjoying Karla Cornejo Villavicencio's nonfiction work The Undocumented Americans, I was looking forward to what a work of fiction would look like from her. In Catalina, Villavicencio tracks a young undocumented women through her years at Harvard as an undergraduate. Catalina was orphaned in Ecuador and after living with her aunt and uncle for a bit, she goes to live with her grandmother and grandfather in New York City. Expectations are high for her, and she receives a scholarship to Harvard. This book interrogates the push and pull that undocumented individuals have navigating life- the expectation to succeed while always needing to be careful and the stress that it induces. This book takes place pre-DACA and Catalina is disappointed with each lack of passage of the bill.

This book did not necessarily have a lot plot-wise going on with it. There is uncertainty about her grandfather's status in the country which drives a subplot, and Catalina is in a relationship with a fellow student that she is constantly drawing in and pushing away. When the book ended, I just was not sure how much I ended up really getting out of it.

Thank you to One World via NetGalley for the advance reader copy in exchange for honest review.

This book was a highly anticipated read being the debut novel of the author of one of my all time favorite non-fiction books and it lived up to my expectations. A thought provoking story of an undocumented Harvard student and her experience at the elite institution that highlighted the ways in which often times well intentioned people cause harm to the undocumented community.

A stunning debut and a journey of identity and resilience. The writing is beautiful snd explores the undocumented experience
Many thanks to Random House and to Netgallry for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

Thank you to Net Galley and Random House Publishing for the ARC. I really enjoyed reading this book. Karla Cornejo Villavicencio has such a beautiful, immersive writing style, which made reading Catalina such an amazing experience. The blurb of the book made me expect academia vibes, so even though the book was different to my expectations, I still loved it. This story follows Catalina, an undocumented immigrant, during her final year at Harvard. We learn about both past and present events, and follow along her life, so not just academia, but love, working at the Peabody, family, and so many other things. I really enjoyed the stream of consciousness style, it helped make the story very immersive, and understand and empathize with Catalina.

BOOK REVIEW: Catalina by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

Rating: ⭐️⭐️

Summary: This is a story with a diary perspective of a young adult named Catalina who is undocumented and is solely her experience of her life as a student while at Harvard. She struggles with several things throughout the story, some being identity, immigration in the United States, familial, focus, and also romance (which is very limited). What is true from the book summary of this book is that you follow Catalina for a year in her life and experience her struggles secondhand.

What I Did Like:
Catalina has a very strong character and Latina influence in her own group of friends. Being Cuban myself, I understand some of when the author mentions the difference culturally (in terms of Latinos) in different parts of the USA. Not being a dreamer myself, I enjoyed the insight from a DACA student at Harvard and living on/off with her grandparents. This story could be a big eye opener for people who have not heard of undocumented immigrant stories.

What I Did Not Like:
These are all in my own opinion of the storyline. Starting right off the bat, I did not feel that the summary given on this book was very misleading as the book was not surrounding a true romance of any kind which is why I requested this ARC via Netgalley. The book was very difficult to get through because of the constant drawn out thoughts of the narrator and lack of a solid plot. The character Catalina seemed a little bit of what I would describe as a troubled soul. There was limited dialogue which made the reader guess how most of the conversations ended making it seem more of a diary. I would compare it to [book:The Diary of a Young Girl|48855] because of how inward the story seems.

Good/Bad Ending: I feel that the ending could have some improvement as nothing made sense. It felt as if the story writing was rushed in order to make a deadline and it was just settled with an epilogue. But I did not get to hear what exactly happened to her grandfather.

Additional thoughts: Overall, I felt like if there would have been more organization in this story and more context/dialogue, I would have loved it. There was a little too much political speak for my liking which made me feel a little uncomfortable while reading causing me to lag in reading time.

I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own based on the reading.

Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC.

This book is around 200 pages and it took me a month to finish, here's why:

-It's written in a stream of consciousness way (where the author seems to be writing as things come to mind without really an specific timeline to her train of thought) and at the beginning it seemed a bit chaotic. It was also my very first book of this author to read so I wasn't used to her style of writing and it took me a minute to get used to it.

-Catalina was a bit of an unhinged character. To my understanding, this is somewhat of an autobiography of the author but it's also fiction. Some parts of Catalina's story really resonated with me. Especially her experience as an immigrant in the United States. However, I think the character seemed a little immature at times and it took away maybe that introspective reflection I was hoping we would get from her.

Still, her immaturity made sense as she is growing up away from her grandparents and trying to find herself.

The ending left a little to be desired as I didn't feel it really tied any loose ends.

All in all, I still think the book was great. Tough to get through? Yes. A bit on the chaotic side? Definitely. But it gives an amazing peek into the experience of immigrants and what goes on inside as we try to navigate flourishing in a new country.

Book Title: Catalina
Author: Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Publisher: Random Publishing Group – Random House-One Word
Genre: Family Drama
Pub Date: July 23, 2024
My Rating: 3 Stars!
Pages: 224
Catalina is an undocumented immigrant who came to America from Ecuador as a child to live with her grandparents from Ecuador.
Catalina was accepted at Harvard, although Pre DACA she was indeed a DREAMER.
The big obstacle is that she was undocumented - true Ivy League educated but will she be able to secure a job upon graduation?

We follow her Catalina journey during her time at Harvard. As a high school Guidance Counselor as well as a College Admissions Advisor I spent a larger amount of time researching as well as visiting colleges to help students with their college journey. I totally loved the college atmosphere and understand the situation of undocumented students.
I wanted to love this but . . . .

Want to thank NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group, Random House-One Word for granting me this early eGalley.
Publishing Release Date scheduled for July 23, 2024.

What a great novel! I was completely absorbed into this story from the first page. Catalina is full of chaotic energy, she is bright and tragic, and is driven by her wild heart. She truly is a character you won’t forget.

This story follows Catalina and her time at Harvard.
Catalina is undocumented. Her college is aware, but she keeps the secret close. It defines her as she thinks about almost every moment in every interaction of her life.

Catalina is absolutely chaotic in a way that is incredibly amusing, adds to the plot, but doesn't distract from the commentary being. There were many heavy and emotional topics addressed throughout this book and the author did a wonderful job of writing them so that they weren't jarring or a screeching halt to the tone of the book. Rather, it simply was another part of Catalina and her life for the reader to embrace.

Thank you NetGalley for the arc in exchange for a honest review.

I chose to read this novel because I had found Villavicencio's earlier nonfiction work, The Undocumented Americans, to be informative and worthwhile. In that book, she recounted interviews with undocumented immigrants all around the country; in this novel, her focus is narrower, centered on a young woman sent from Ecuador to the Bronx at age six, to live with her (undocumented) grandparents. Catalina's early years in America are hardly mentioned, though, and the novel begins after she has won a scholarship, and begun her studies at Harvard University. Catalina seems both proud and ashamed of her status as an impoverished Latine [the label she uses in the novel] student at Harvard, and isolates herself to a large degree from the privileged white students who surround her. The novel is narrated by Catalina in the first person, and provides the reader with a perspective of a "Dreamer", an individual who came to America as a child, and whose memories of the country of her birth are vague and limited.

I struggled to connect with the story or its characters, and persisted to the end only because of my sense of obligation to read and review the book that was provided to me free via NetGalley. Unfortunately, this book turned out not to be a good choice for me, and not one I can recommend.

Thank you to the Publisher for my arc!

I actually really enjoyed this. The story was interesting and I loved the characters. The only thing i didn't like was that it wasn't long enough.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read an advance copy of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

The main character of this story, Catalina, is soooooooo funny. As another review so rightly put it, she is a "hilarious hater"! Being in the head of a character like that...whew! As debut novels go, this one is definitely a gem that will make you both laugh and cry!

I loved this book! This is a tightly-written page-turner of a campus novel that interrogates the elite university experience. And it is funny!

The main character, Catalina, is an undocumented young woman raised by strict grandparents following the death of her parents. Catalina is smart and funny and takes us through her experience at Harvard with a snarky yet hopeful voice. We meet her love interests and listen to her conversations with many well-meaning but ultimately condescending adults. We experience parties with her and the pull of hookups, all while her grandparents' expectations and the fear of what will happen after she graduates. Interwoven throughout is political commentary about US-Latin American relations throughout history.

This is a unique and fun book, and short at about 200 pages. Highly recommend!

Catalina is an undocumented immigrant from Ecuador in a pre-DACA era. She gets accepted into Harvard and is learning the realities of being undocumented and basically becoming un-hireable after an expensive education.

This story is an eye opening experience for someone like me, who is a US citizen, with what undocumented educated people go through in this day in age. Their struggles and the emotional toll it takes to be undocumented in the United States.

I highly recommend this one.

This is a hard-hitting piece of literary fiction that forces you into someone else’s shoes and makes you look at the world in a different way. The writing style is free flowing and makes it easy to feel all the fears, hopes, anger and love that Catalina feels. Catalina is an Undocumented immigrant who came to New York to live with her grandparents after her parents died. Her grandparents were heartbroken, but saw Catalina as the bright light that would get an education and “make it” in America. They struggled daily, in a world that did not accept them, in the hopes that she would succeed. Catalina’s drama begins to reach a peak her senior year at Harvard. This is the last stop on the undocumented education train and the future looks just as dark as her grandparents. Without citizenship she would not be able to get jobs that her education would normally provide for her. She is also surrounded by trust fund kids who think everything in life is easy and don’t understand the hidden worries that she carries inside of her. Periods of darkness and melancholy surround Catalina, but she still wants to try for this “love” thing that so many of her peers have found and lost. While struggling her way through this difficult time she finds herself, she finds the people who are there for her, she becomes aware of the injustices of society, and the cultural misappropriation by the educated people around her. This is a short character driven novel that is heavy on feelings.

I think this book does a good job of showing what being undocumented in America does to your emotional and mental health and the toll it takes, but the meanderings of the main characters thoughts made it hard for me to want to finish the book. Luckily it wasn’t too long. I think the author did a great job of presenting the main character and all her challenges, but also left a lot of questions unanswered. Like I really wanted to know that her grandpa made it to safety and why she did certain things that seemed totally unrelated to being undocumented or losing her parents. Or why she refuses to get therapy with all her cries for help.

It feels reductive to say this, but reading this reminded me of Elif Batuman's The Idiot. Other than the obvious similarity of both novels being about a non-legacy Harvard student navigating their classes and relationships, I found both protagonists to be similarly spunky and funny. The glaring difference is that Catalina is undocumented (as are her grandparents who raised her), and this is largely a secret she keeps from everyone she interacts with at Harvard. This of course raises the stakes of everything she's experiencing in school, and affects how she responds to others and the decisions she makes. Following Catalina felt frustrating at times, but she has so much weighing on her. Having read many campus novels, I feel that this is a perspective that was missing from the genre and I'm glad Cornejo Villavicencio decided to dive into the fiction realm after her stunning debut, The Undocumented Americans. This doesn't quite make my top reads of the year list, but it was funny and sad and overall a special reading experience.

I received this book as an ARC from NetGalley.

Catalina is not your average college senior who is looking forward to her career, her life, and her future.

Instead, she is an undocumented immigrant from Latin America. She was living with her undocumented grandparents in New York when she was accepted by Harvard. The University's policies did not object to her immigration status and they kept it secret. She has been a very successful student - making friends, joining societies and activities, and excelling academically. While this is all very positive, her future is scary.

This was a really different read for me, as I am clearly outside the target audience- or maybe I really am the target audience, as someone who is so far removed from the immigrant experience and the undocumented that I need to learn more about this segment of our population. It's brilliantly written in parts, though not all of it worked for me. I think that the author is bright as could be, but for what felt like a campus novel this novel is wildly lacking in specificity of place. On the other hand- if you take it as a coming of age, or a coming of realization of the deep misunderstandings of our country, maybe specificity is beside the point. Four stars for smart language and prose, but it just didn't work for me the way I wanted it to. The literal threads of the story just didn't connect for me- but I still enjoyed watching them woven in front of me.

📚Book review📚 :: Catalina by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

Story premise: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Character development: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Writing style: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Ending: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio lends Catalina a voice that is not only important but crucial to truly understanding the impact of colonization, immigration policy and trauma on generations of people.

Catalina is funny, brilliant and beautiful. She's a Harvard student about to enter the "real world" but she's held back from certain possibilities because of her immigration status. Born in Ecuador, Catalina grieves her birth parents and her legality as many 20-somethings would grieve anything: with humor, compartmentalization and denial. That is, until her family's origins catch up with her. Then, not even sex and sarcasm can save her from her past.

While Catalina grapples with her identity as a young woman, she also has to figure out who she is as a Dreamer (a hopeful recipient of the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act). Who is she separate from her status? Can she ever really know? Does she want to?

I loved the perspective of this book. It is unlike any narrative of any book on the cluster f*ck that is immigration policy that I've ever read. It felt so real, so true. Catalina was her status but she was so much more. She was flawed, strange, even callous sometimes. She wasn't the poster child, wasn't the "perfect" Dreamer. Like every other college kid, Catalina was intense and boundless one moment and completely vapid and deranged the next. Catalina, like all of us, contains multitudes.

As the book drew to a close, the intensity of Catalina's powerlessness was intense and palpable. Cornejo Villavicencio wrote her dejection in such a way as to make the reader feel the character's immobility and sadness.

I love how impactful this book was. Catalina was just Catalina in many ways. But she was also the product of all our histories. The histories of imperialism, of stolen futures because, "there were consequences to empire."