A book about an undocumented pastry chef who returns to his "country of origin", Spain, and has a relationship with Jacobo, a well-to-do-student. The text explores social class, sexuality, and love. A wonderful conceit, but the writing falls a bit short.

I think that readers of A Little Life and Call Me by Your Name will like this novel. It has strong themes of identity and home.

deeply disappointing. given that the novel very much hinges on this relationship between the leads to have said relationship be so banal and unconvincing...the object of desire of our main lead is not even half as interesting as the narrative thinks he is. the whole will-they-won't they tension wasn't 'tension-ing'..

Ultimately I did not enjoy this book. I thought it was lacking on any kind of LGBT storyline and was basically a book about a pastry chef. I understood the theme of not knowing where "home" is but at the same time it fell flat. Loved the cover though!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a free advanced copy of this book to read and review.

Unfortunately, this one just wasn't for me and didn't captivate me in the way that I had hoped. I ended up DNF.

I really enjoyed this! I would recommend if you liked Call Me by Your Name and A Little Life, but are looking for something a bit more subtle and less heavy. I loved the writing style and the descriptions of locations and foods. Not a whole lot happens plot wise, but at the same time, it feels like a lot happens, yet things are not neatly wrapped up which I didn’t mind.

Demetrio has spent the majority of his life in New York with his uncle and has been a pastry chef at a French restaurant for the last seven years. When he seeks a new opportunity at Four Seasons, his status as an undocumented immigrant becomes known and he ultimately decides to be voluntarily deported back to Spain, despite not having lived there since he was very young. On the plane ride to Madrid, Demetrio meets Jacobo, who is a student at NYU and also part of an aristocratic family. Demetrio doesn't know anyone in Madrid and finds himself gravitating towards Jacobo and quickly falling into his wealthy, carefree orbit. Demetrio then balances the challenge of creating a whole new life in a city he doesn't know and coming to terms with what he wants for the future, while also exploring the instant attraction he feels for Jacobo. Overall, a look into what someone would do if they had to reinvent their life, far from the home and support system they are familiar with. The relationship between Demetrio and Jacobo seemed imbalanced and it was unclear what exactly about Jacobo prompted such strong emotions. The book also felt at times like it glossed over things for the sake of spontaneity and convenience.

Countries of Origin is a book that if I had to summarize in one word, it would be, sensual.
⠀
Its 2007 and twenty four year old pastry chef Demetrio has been living in Manhattan as an undocumented immigrant.
“I had become an adult in a twenty-six-by-fourteen foot kitchen among aggressive, type A chefs and cooks who yelled the first chance they got. While my friends spent their teenage years skating on the streets of the lower east Side, I learned to surf the heat waves radiating from convection ovens.”
Raised by his Uncle Chus, and mentored by his boss/chef he is presented with an opportunity to move up in the culinary world. But when the possibility of his immigration status could be revealed, he is left with the sobering decision to go back to Madrid, before getting deported. On the flight back to his homeland he is seated next to Jacobo, a handsome young man also from Spain, who is returning home for the summer after being in school at NYU. What starts as a chance meeting begins to grow into a lesson in chemistry as the two men circle each other with a palpable attraction that stutters forward like an impromptu tango, an undefined relationship beginning to germinate.
⠀
I read almost this entire book in one afternoon becoming so enamored with these characters wrestling with sexuality, class distinctions, and their increasing and complex attraction to each other. Fuentes’ prose is everything here and this is where the sensual comes in, from the food so lovingly prepared by Deme, to his visual feast of the streets and bars of Madrid, (I could feel the heat coming off the pavement on the page)
I was here for all of it.
⠀
The book left me with the same kind of romantic melancholy of both #CallMeByYourName and the Richard Linklater film #BeforeSunset
This is the perfect book not only for #Pride but also for summer.
Best enjoyed with a chilled bottle of wine and the most decadent chocolate you can find. Thanks to @pantheonbooks and @netgalley for the advance

Thank you to NetGalley and the amazing publisher for the ARC of this title! I am so grateful to be auto-approved for this title!
I look forward to reading and reviewing. More to come!

Unfortunately, the novel was not for me. It's too grounded in identity politics, while I like my books queer.

i’m sorry to report that i *really* didn’t like this one. and i had high hopes going into it, because i thought that reading the story of a spanish man reconnecting with a homeland that he hardly knows (because of having grown up in the us) would be super fascinating, particularly as i myself am spanish (born and raised in the town that the mc was born in, in fact!).

the thing is — nothing about this novel felt genuine. most of it read like a tourist-y guide of spain made entirely palatable for americans, with no genuine reflections on the country, the dictatorship that it went through or even the zeitgeist of the early 2000’s, when spain was going through some major cultural changes (i.e. the legalisation of gay marriage, the consequences of its participation in the iraq war, and so on). fuentes doesn’t paint a disrespectful picture of spain, but his narration is far from truly grasping what the country is like to those of us who have lived here all our lives. i do think that this stems from a major narrative choice, though — simply because reading dialogues in english that are meant to be in spanish didn’t feel right, and i do think that the general sense of alienation that i felt while reading this novel was due to the fact that i simply couldn’t understand why it was written in english to begin with. i get that it would be incredibly hard to write a novel in two different languages, but i really do think this one would have benefitted from including more dialogues in spanish, because they definitely would have helped create a more authentic atmosphere.

my other major issue with this novel is that it all felt overly dramatic. i do get that demetrio is in a very delicate position for most of the story, but his relationship with his uncle chus was a little too cringey (who asks his own nephew if he’s had “big-boy sex” with the boy he likes, for crying out loud?) and i definitely couldn’t care less about jacobo, because their dynamic seemed straight out of skins (yeah, *that* skins. the one with dev patel and nicholas hoult from the late 2000’s). oh, and don’t get me started on the mother-who-has-cancer-just-for-the-two-mcs-to-have-an-excuse-to-reconnect trope, because it makes me sick.

so yeah, i really had high hopes for this novel, but i’m sorry to say that it didn’t deliver at all. i do think the writing was good, and i do think a few changes would make it at least a little bit more worthwhile, but i can’t even say i enjoyed this one. sad beep.

Demetrio, the narrator of "Countries of Origin," is an undocumented Spanish immigrant and pastry chef who rises to the pinnacle of his profession while coping with the constant fear of being deported. After accepting a job at the Four Seasons restaurant, though, his lack of papers finally catches up to him and he decides to voluntarily return to Spain.

On his flight to Madrid, he sits next to the handsome, playful and sensitive Jacobo, a student at NYU going home to his aristocratic, fascist family and there is an instant, unacknowledged electricity between them.

Tom Wolfe once famously wrote that "you can't go home again," but that's not necessarily the goal for Demetrio. Here, in Javier Fuentes' smouldering prose, we bear witness to what it really feels like to be caught in between cultures and countries. Fans of Salman Rushdie and André Aciman will scarf down this story of decisions made and chances taken.