I wanted to love Loca, and I’ve held onto this book for a long time, starting and restarting. There’s aspects about it I do love—the beginning of the friendship of with Sal and Charo, the gritty realities of both their lives. I will never forget the scene where Sal watches another queer person dress in feminine clothes as they prep for a party and the feeling of freedom he both watches this person embody and also wishes for himself. Heredia has a penchant for zooming in on the important details, but doesn’t let us linger. Instead, many scenes feel rushed and sometimes disorganized. The book is doing so so much, and for its representation I’m incredibly grateful. But I wished so much for slowing down, for lingering in joy, for a more tenuous connection between the friends.

Loca was a super interesting read. I loved the character study and the writing felt propulsive. I'd read more from the author.

I really enjoyed the first half of this book. I didn’t care for Charo. I much preferred reading from Sal’s point of view. His voice was much more stronger and interesting. I liked the tone of this book, but not much happened to keep my attention. The writing was excellent but the author needs to work on his storytelling skills. Also this book was way too long. About a hundred pages should have been removed.

3 stars. A solid read, better than some of the other books on the Latinx diaspora experience that I've read this year (and before). The book arguably had one main character, Sal, for most of the first 2/3s of the story, but splintered off later on, which both added interest but sometimes also a bit of confusion. In fact, the character of Charo, originally more of a secondary character, became a more central person later on, and honestly, usually more interesting than Sal.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for a digital ARC of this book in exchange for my honest opinions.

A beautiful moving story about queer friendship in 1990's New York. The characters, their relationships are outstanding. I loved the honesty, and the tenderness. This book and story will stay with you long after you finish reading it.

This book was beautiful. Not just the cover either. The characters were written wonderfully and you find yourself feeling like you’re there with them. This story is raw, real, and unflinching. I enjoyed this author’s writing style and characterization and loved feeling like I knew the characters and were rooting for them. The author writes with a truthfulness that is heavy, but easy to feel. I absolutely loved this story and would happily read anything Alejandro Heredia puts out next!

Unfortunately this one did not work for me. I went into it with high expectations, and while it may be a home run for others I found myself putting it down quickly / not feeling excited to pick it up. I DNFed- I tried to listen to it as well but sadly we just didn’t vibe!

This book is deeply tied to the culture it represents, it has a beautiful way of letting small details come through that bring you closer to it, with a cast of characters that beyond feeling like heroes or villains of an epic story, feel like someone you could meet casually in a conershop.

At some times I enjoyed reading about them, following the story and travelling back and forth between the past and the present and the different POVs, at times I was more eager to follow some stories than others but it comes with being attached to the things you can relate to. However sometimes it was hard to follow, the story felt too heavy to pick up when it seemed that all that this characters were going through was a tragedy after another (which in hindsight it's more of the story being told that how it is told, which comes up to be something subjective whether it's good or not)

In the end, this story feels realistic, it feels like stepping into someone else's shoes for a second, being the protagonist of a story that feels foreign and familiar at the same time.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC in exchange of an honest review.

I really enjoyed this story. I love immigrant stories. This one takes place in the 90s in NYC.

Sal is a gay Dominican immigrant. He struggles with fear and doubt about his future while trying to escape his painful past. Charo is his best friend who is newly married with a young child. She is struggling to adjust to her new life. Both characters are messy & complicated.

I was really immersed in the story. It explores themes around queerness, race, living in a different country, overall immigrant struggles, motherhood.

The story was tender & emotional. It felt like an honest portrayal of the immigrant life.

Thank you Netgalley & Simon & Schuster for gifting me this book in exchange for an honest review!

LOCA by Alejandro Heredia is a very compelling read. I was hooked within the first three sentences. Sal and Charo's friendship feels deeply rooted and grounds the story in the way that only a long-time friend-family relationship can. Even when they annoy each other or are upset with each other, this duo feels anchored in the other's orbit. I really enjoyed Heredia's writing at the line level as well as at the overall storytelling level. This is one I look forward to using in a class soon.

À powerful and compelling debut from Alejandro Heredia. The writing is immersive, and the characters feel raw and real. The story explores deep emotions and identity with a fresh, engaging voice. While some moments felt slightly uneven, the overall impact of the novel is undeniable.

This book was really great. I loved the authors writing and description of events. It felt like I was living with them. I personally think it read almost like a saga even though it was told within a year. But it was so cool seeing the progression of the characters. I think the author created the characters with so much depth and detail and it was easy to get attached to them. I would’ve loved to have some of them as friends in real life.

The gorgeous cover art for this book 100% drew me in, and I'm so glad it did.

This amazing, honest, and tender debut puts Heredia at the forefront of new voices in contemporary literature. I loved spending time with these characters and the nuanced explorations of identity.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the advanced copy.

The way this story was told really helped me to connect with both Sal and Charo. The first half of the novel is predominantly Sal’s story, as we see both his present life in New York City and the events leading up to when he leaves the Dominican Republic. In coming to the US, Sal is able to reunite with his mother and develop a relationship with the brother he grew up not knowing. He is able to be queer in a way he wasn’t back in the DR, but NYC in the late 90s still isn’t as accepting as you would hope. Charo has it all - a partner she loves, a beautiful daughter, and a job that allows her a bit of freedom. Things begin to change when Robert becomes controlling and eventually does something she cannot forgive. With the help of her new friends, she begins to realize she can have a life that’s different than the one she’s been dealt.

What I loved most about this was the found family element. Both Sal and Charo have their natural families, but the friends they adopt as family along the way is what makes this book truly special. In Sal’s DR chapters we see him coming into his own as a young queer man and connecting with the small, somewhat secret community. Renata takes him and Yadiel under her wings and helps them safely explore the queer scene in their town. These chapters were some of my favorites, even if they end up being some of the most heartbreaking.

I really liked reading Sal and Charo’s stories, and thought this wass a well written debut. I look forward to reading more from this author in the future.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster for a review copy.

A slow moving exploration of the immigrant experience for Dominicans in New York Sal and Chato. Each are running from things, looking for things, and finding the American dream to not be all they expected.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this eARC.

Loca follows best friends Sal and Charo as they pursue their dreams in New York City.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book! I struggled at first with the way the book struck such an odd balance between Sal and Charo, with the narrative more Sal-focused to start and Charo coming in closer to the end, but ultimately I think this choice allowed me greater investment in each character individually than if they had been evened out throughout the story. I love a nonlinear narrative, too, and Heredia used that nonlinear structure to really highlight the thematic richness and nuance of the narrative in a way I'm sure I'll be thinking about long into the future. The story is intricate, careful, and heartfelt, and Heredia's writing is just spectacular. As a reading experience, this definitely required continuous, conscious engagement with the text -- it was not a book I sunk into so much as a book I pored over -- but it was spectacular nonetheless.

This book was so well written about the gay I. Life in New York City and s.A.N t o d o m I n g o. S a l is gay person who's coming out as a gay. Is friend c h a r o n they both grew up in the S a n t o d o n I n g o. Sal was raised by his grandmother because his mother left to go to new york. CHA RO was raised by both parents.But her father had an accident so her uncle got her to go to new york when she turned eighteen. Cell knew he was gay because he had a very good friend. But things turned out tragically for this person. So he left And went to new york to be with his mother and his half brother. Things were hard for him there. He couldn't get jobs and he kept going as best he could. Meets, a man who really falls in love out with his best friend. Go to a gay night club. CHA RO was having problems as well. Because she had a little girl named Caroline. But her husband named Robert was very controlling. Things got out of hand when caroline heard herself. I like how people make choices in this book.Because they had to but they Author did a really good job explaining this.
Like going back in time and then coming back into the fourth time. These two people had to find out who they really were. And I think it's so well written. How people have different conversations? And either gay or straight relationships. There is a happy ending to this book.And you will really be surprised how things worked out

I enjoyed learning reading about a culture I haven't read about before. I liked the author's writing style as well. I found that with multiple timelines and POVs, it was hard to stay engaged. There were also a lot of characters, many of who didn't appear until the last third.

"What's worse than leaving your life, your world, to begin again in a place that wants your working hands but not your culture, language, and history? Than living in this new place feeling torn in half, of two places but somehow from neither at once? Being an immigrant in this country is hard enough. But being a gay immigrant, he never gave that much thought until he got fired from the garden."

Sal and Charo are the best of friends, dating back to their adolescence in the Dominican Republic. Now they are both in the Bronx, dealing with their demons as twenty-somethings. Sal, a gay man, left a world of pain behind and moved to New York to reunite with his mother and the brother he had never met. He struggles to find and keep work and runs from commitment. Charo left her repressive home and mother in the DR to try to make her way on her own, and soon finds herself partnered up and with a young child. Neither of the two can seem to find peace, and this book is the story of their journey to do exactly that.

There are parts of this book that I really liked: Sal and Charo are interesting characters. Sal's life in the Dominican Republic as a gay teen is compelling and tense; Charo's life seems harder than it actually is -- and you want to shake her sometimes. But, the book is truly too long and veers off course, introducing new characters that really don't have much to do with the plot. The novel does take on a lot of the issues that immigrants face, which is quite timely. Also, watching the two main characters' evolution is satisfying. If only the book were shorter.

A novel of expats, love, legacies, and what the future holds for us when we're caught between clinging to the past we know while reaching for the possibilities of a whole new world appearing before us. Simply the best story of charting a path through life since "Countries of Origin" by Javier Fuentes.