Like Happiness is about a young woman who reflects on the relationship she had with a prominent male author in the wake of sexual assault allegations against him.

The problem I had with this book was with Tatum, the main character. She seems more like a collection of sentences than a character. Specifically, her inner monologue basically had her explaining why and how she had reactions to things. If you’re using first person POV, do not have your character constantly justifying and narrating her emotions and actions to her own head. Show don’t tell can be hard in first person but it can be done and otherwise it is awkward and weirdly formal.

Thank you to NetGalley and Celadon Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

This book keeps reminding me of 'Letter From an Unknown Woman' by Stefan Zweig (which I adore) and Haruki Murakami (which I dislike).

I enjoy the nuanced writing style, the second-person narrative, and the author’s choice to omit some major, twisty-worthy plot points. The anti-climax is so refreshing.

Even though the protagonist and I have zero experiences in common, I feel like I’ve been in similar situations or relationships, at least remotely. The emotional relevance is astonishing. Should I write a fan letter?

However, I really dislike the random name-dropping of artists/writers/songs/musicians. While the name mentions are relevant to the story half of the time, the rest just feel like showing off. It’s a pet peeve of mine. I don’t like when Murakami does that in his books, and I don’t like it in this book.

It’s funny that the author mentions Murakami so much in her book but doesn’t add his name in the acknowledgments while mentioning other inspiring authors. It’s like a book within a book. Is this on purpose? I don’t know, but I enjoyed it very much.

What do I think of this one? For starters, this is a very easy story to get wrapped into. How she meets Mateo and how her life wraps around him. At some point, it starts to get hard to listen to it. And then the betrayal at the end? Damn - that was rough.

I did find it a little confusing when it switched to the 2015 in Chile parts of the story. Idk if I just missed the switch or what but that threw me off a couple of times!

I’d give this one a 3.5. Engaging character even if she was naive. It was hard to listen to her be groomed by this man, idk the toxic relationship was tough. It’s giving what John Mayer does to get more creative content for his music….fu**ed up

I just don't think I am going to be able to give this book it's just review because I don't think I have the right words to describe it's eloquence and the way it will move the reader. Nevermind the story, I'll get to that in a minute, but the way the book is written, the poetic cadence, the weaving of the protagonist's list of books and authors that influence her, the depth of feeling as she comes to terms with the last 10 years of her life. It is so moving and deep and as you read, you want to shake her and say, "Wake up woman... don't you see what he's doing to you?" And finally, when she does, while it's a relief, at the same time, the reader feels like the bottom just dropped out of her world and will she ever be able to put the pieces back together and find her way to happiness.
Tatum Vega writes a fan letter to author M. Dominguez after reading his book "Happiness." Tatum has a visceral, almost life altering reaction to his story and feels compelled to let him know. Tatum is almost graduating from Williams College with a dual major in art and english. She is one of very few Latinas at the predominately white school and feels very awkward and out of place far from her Texas roots. Reading has been her obsession since her childhood and finds comfort in books and storytelling. So she is shocked when M. Dominguez replies to her letter and continues his correspondence with her via emails and later phone calls and finally meeting in person. He calls her mi vida or "my life" and she calls him Mateo. The 8 year age difference doesn't seem to matter to Tatum who becomes infatuated with him though Mateo is aloof but strings her along in an affectionate, paternal way over their 10 year relationship. She is never sure what he wants from her but is always there for him, answering texts, supporting his ego, traveling with him to book signings, just always a little bit out of his sphere but never completely away from his "grip." He always gives her just enough to keep her lurking nearby, feeling important to him and needed.
With the enormous success of "Happiness", Mateo has been struggling for years to write a second novel. He never shares with Tatum what he is writing though she asks him all the time. Meanwhile, he has his little meaningless trysts with fancy, successful women all the while, his affection seems to go only to Tatum. And Tatum finally realizes that she deserves someone to care emotionally and physically to her too and she meets Hiroshi who after a time, invites her to move in with him. But Mateo continues to keep his grip on Tatum's heart and psyche and subtly plays all the mind games with her, again, keeping her a distance but just within reach. It will take his new novel to finally implode their relationship for good.
This story is told as Tatum writes a final letter accounting her memories of their relationship to him after a NY reporter contacts her for an interview after another of Mateo's woman accuses him of being abusive towards her. This letter is cathartic and helps her to finally close the door to their toxic relationship. She is living in Chile and in a healthy supportive relationship with her partner Vera. Now with 30 year old eyes and more life experience, she can finally see what he was doing to her and she wants him to know. The last line of the story was so brilliant and perfectly sums up how this relationship defined her for 10 years : The wind picked up and crushed us together until I felt at home in your shadow. My own silhouette had been swallowed by your outline, and on the sand, I disappeared. "Mateo," I whispered. "Don't ever move." (pg 240)
The title of the book is so subtle because it defines what she thought was what happiness looked like until it didn't.
I am going to be thinking about this book for a very long time! I hope Villarreal-Moura has something in the queue soon. I am sure I will devour that book the way I did this one.
Thank you to Netgalley, Celadon Books and the author for the privilege of this ARC and for my own honest opinions in this review.

4.25 stars
I read this book over the course of a couple of days and watched the movie "Miller's Girl" in that time as well, so it's been an excellent time for being disgusted with men in positions of power over young girls! 

This is Tatum's story, told in dual timelines: present time, where she's living in Chile with her partner, Vera, and receives an unexpected phone call from a reporter for the New York Times. Mateo, a famous author who Tatum had a very close relationship with in the past, has been accused of sexual abusing female fans. Despite her insistence that her experiences with him were different, the Times wants to hear about her relationship with Mateo. The other timeline is told as a letter Tatum is writing Mateo and begins when she is in college, far from home, and desperate for an intellectual companion outside of literature. She writes a fan letter to her favorite author, and surprise, surprise, he writes back, and the two strike up a friendship.

The writing in this is beautiful, and I really appreciated the way that Tatum thought about books and reading. Hearing about her struggles with finding her own identity, first through stories and then through other people was poignant and painful. As the book went on I couldn't resist sending my friends updates and intense lines, which to me is one of the marks of a good book. There's so much detail in nuance in the first half of the book as the relationships shift and progress, I wish that we'd gotten more of that towards the end as Tatum has more realizations about her relationship with Mateo. I'd also have loved to see the fallout of things after her interviews with the reporter, and even more on how she ended up in Chile. But overall this was a thought-provoking read, and I definitely recommend. 

Thank you to Celadon Books and the author for the advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this eARC.

This novel is set in Chile, where Tatum Vega leads a happy life with her partner, Vera. She enjoys being surrounded by art at the museum where she works.

However, Tatum's memories linger of a decade spent in the gravitational pull of a brilliant and enigmatic writer, M. Domínguez.

Like Happiness unfurls its narrative across dual timelines.

Ursula Villarreal-Moura masterfully navigates intricate relationships, and the bond between Tatum and Domínguez's is an all-consuming force that shaped Tatum's early adulthood.

The novel's structure mirrors Tatum's internal struggle by alternating between the present and the past via a heartfelt letter, which exposes old secrets.

The silence between the lines speak volumes of things left unsaid, memories, and the ache of loss.

Villarreal-Moura paints a vivid canvas of Latina identity in both the streets of New York City and the sun-drenched Chilean landscapes, as the pulse of memories converge. Tatum's journey becomes a reckoning—an excavation of self, culture, and the blurred boundaries of fame.

Like Happiness reads as if you are having a conversation with a treasured friend, and it lingers with you long after you have finished reading it...

Ursula Villarreal-Moura's debut resonates as a beautifully written, engaging read.

Like Happiness was completely unputdownable and such a unique story for me. From the moment Tatum started her letter to M. Domininguez to the last page, I was hooked.

The book is an epistolary novel, written in the form of a letter from Tatum to her author idol Mateo Domininguez, as she tries to come to terms with the poisonous relationship the two of them shared. Intermittently there are present day chapters written from Tatum’s POV.
The writing style was beautiful and the story line captivating. The incorporation of the perspective of a Latina character living in a non-Latino world was so concise and revealing in its perspective. It was presented in a manner that made me consider how others are treated. The inclusion of Spanish throughout the novel really helped solidify this viewpoint.

The character of Tatum was very relatable on so many terms. She is young and naïve, and far from her family. Ripe for someone to come along and take advantage of.

When I look back at this novel and try to consider what the author should change, I come up blank. This book was so well written and enjoyable that if it isn’t my top read of 2024 it will be very close to it.

Would I recommend it? Yes! Read it! Pre-order it! Whatever, get your hands on a copy and be prepared to be engrossed into the pages.

Beautiful writing. I found this book to be a quick read, and really powerful! This is one that I'll be thinking about for a long time. I would recommend!

I enjoyed reading this. The writing is very good. The author's use of second person through much of the book is well done.

In thinking about this afterward, I struggle with a lot of it. The protagonist's closure through explaining to Matteo how he hurt her is confusing. He's so self-centered and oblivious - why would he care how she feels, especially now? Also, she faults him for stringing her along for a decade, but he didn't really. And many of the character flaws he has, she does also. Most notably, she treats her family and friends pretty poorly, reaching to them when it's convenient for her.

Obviously I'm torn on this one. I would certainly read whatever is next from the author, and I purchased a copy for my library.

Thank you NetGalley and BookishFirst for the ARC.

Thank-you NetGalley and Bookishfirst for the advanced copy of Like Happiness by Ursula Villarreal-Moura in return for my honest review.

Like Happiness is a well-written, thought-provoking work of literary fiction. It is intense, with a melancholy vibe, but for this reader it was engaging and fascinating. The main character, Tatum Vega, confronts her younger self who was caught up in a toxic power dynamic/relationship with an older, famous author. What I especially liked about the novel was that Tatum currently is living with her partner in Chile, working a job that she loves, incredibly happy with her new life. She seemingly has moved past this critical, emotional time, but is forced to reexamine the relationship truthfully when a reporter contacts her looking for corroboration for an assault charge brought by another woman against her former lover. Woman Tatum is revisiting younger Tatum and through a letter she writes to her ex, she lays bare to the reader, and to herself, the fraught ten year relationship young Tatum experienced with this man, as reassessed by her older, more mature self. Her careful separation between her past and present disintegrates. Beautifully written. Amazingly a debut. This is an author to watch.

A powerful story of gender, ethnicity, toxic relationships and how they all effect someone's life. While certainly detailed and mostly interesting, I did find some aspects of the story to be almost over explained. Great topics for discussion and I think it would be a good book club read. Thanks #NetGallley#CeadonBooks

[arc review]
Thank you to Celadon Books for providing an arc, and to Macmillan Audio for providing an alc in exchange for an honest review.
Release date: March 26, 2024

Like Happiness explores power dynamics in a toxic relationship as well as sapiosexuality.

<i>“My circuitry for language and desire are intertwined, which made my learning experience incredibly arousing.”</I>

Tatum initiates a relationship with an author named Mateo via a fan letter when after reading his published work in college, she finds that it greatly resonates with her.
Years later after they’ve parted ways, it’s revealed that Mateo had allegedly sexually assaulted other women, and while that didn’t happen between him and Tatum, as she reflects upon their past interactions, she comes to realize that it was likely that he groomed her.

I can understand where she was coming from at first, having felt truly seen in literature for the first time as a minority race and the comforts that might come with that. But everything else, and the way she inserted herself into his life was a bit much and almost came across like she was full of herself.
I’m unsure if at the end she was able to separate the art from the artist after having built Mateo up to such great lengths, and even masturbating to the things he wrote.

I wasn’t too fond of the writing structure as there was both dual timelines and an alternation between first and second person narration.
Overall, it felt unfinished. It takes until 92% to even learn that Mateo used Tatum as his partial muse for his newest novel, which at the time was a betrayal to her. But aside from the recounting of their decade long relationship in the form of an interview/letter, there really wasn’t enough substantial commentary to the aforementioned themes in the blurb to provide the “complexities” that it’s claiming to delve into. Perhaps a pov from Mateo or the other women he allegedly assaulted would have added more dimension.

Side note: the early audio and ebook versions did differ from each other, so I’m hesitant to review too in depth as I don't know what reflects the final version.
ex.
<i>“Last name?”
“Guy pronounced a word that sounded like a torture device.”</I>
vs
<i>“Last name?”
“Jamie pronounced a name I had never heard.”</I>

An excellent but difficult book to read. The author did a superb job of capturing an abusive relationship that by outward appearances seemed friendly, sweet, and loving. When Tatum, a young adult, falls in love with a book, she writes to the middle-aged author, and a friendship begins. Tatum is infatuated with the man, M. Dominguez, and through the years their friendship is mostly platonic but sometimes includes a sexual component. The sexual relationship is at the older male’s whims and desires, and he remains oblivious to the imbalance in the relationship and the emotional damage he inflicts on Tatum. After many years, Tatum frees herself of the relationship. Years later, however, another young female comes forward with a similar story and relationship with M. Dominguez. This prompts Tatum to reexamine her early adulthood and ask herself what really happened between them. A very well-written novel about the lasting scars a relationship can leave when one person has power over the other.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the author for providing me with the opportunity to read and review this book.

This was gifted to me by the publisher & Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

I was intrigued by this story in the beginning. We are following Tatum, who has been contacted by a media outlet to get her story on a man that she's known for the better part of her adult life. The man is an author and their relationship was sticky and complicated. Tatum finds herself questioning all of the things that she thought she knew about her friend and deciding if she really wants to tell her story when it was so different from other people's stories.

I was optimistic, but this book ended up not being my cup of tea. I found it to be boring and honestly just not what I wanted from a story like this one, it had so much potential, but fell short for me.

What a debut! I enjoyed this book a lot - I felt the way the story was told was so unique and Tatum was a fantastic main character. It's all-too relevant in today's society, where we hear about a narcissistic older man essentially grooming a younger woman, but I appreciated this fresh take on a situation all too familiar to some. The writing style was great, and I felt instantly connected to the narrative and the characters.

Thanks to NetGalley for the eARC.

This was a bit of a slow read that took a little while to get into. I found I was left with a few questions, particularly why it took so long for anyone to see that M was really only grooming Tatum. There were a few events that seemed unrelated or unexplained. (The colleague being fired, Hiroshi’s use of drugs, Maria Luz’s issue with M). This just needed a bit more to get me fully invested.

SPOILERS
First off, I want to thank NetGalley for the ARC of this book. Whether you love it or hate it, or have any sort of complaint about it, there is no denying that this book is absolutely beautifully written. I loved all the references to various authors and books, and works of art. I immersed myself in looking up all who were unfamiliar and added several books to my TBR list. I was immediately drawn in to the letter style format- completely sucked in. There were parts that weren’t necessarily accurate, but I didn’t feel like it took away from the story in any way. There were times when I was so disappointed in Tatum, I could have screamed and times when I so hated Mateo that I could’ve done the same. Yet there were other times when I actually found myself cheering for them, as unrealistic as it was, to end up, finding some sort of happiness. My only disappointment- and this is probably a spoiler-so stop reading right now if you don’t want one… is that I would have liked a little bit more about the years post Mateo. How did Tatum get to Chile 2015. The entire book was devoted to her deep dependency on M. and his manipulation of her emotional attachment to him. When she finally broke free, I would have loved to see how she put herself back together. I also really would have liked to read the finished article.

“The tectonic plates of our relationship were shifting that night, but I had miscalculated the direction.”

Despite the word happiness in the title, first-person narrator Tatum Vega often finds that to be an elusive quality in her life. There is a sense that Tatum’s coming-of-age experience, starting in college and carrying us through her life for ten years, is one with stubborn tendrils which still choke some joy out of her life. Like so many young adults, Tatum’s romantic relationships provide mountain-top highs; however, her lows are not a gradual dulling of brilliant new love but a sudden toss into sink-hole lows. Exacerbating Tatum’s heartache is the fact that one man, an older and famous author M. (Mateo) Dominguez, has repeat appearances in her life. So those tectonic plates provide heartbreaking turbulence many times.

Tatum is a literature-loving college student in Boston. The novel is peppered with a variety of book and story titles, including those by M. Dominguez which exist only in this story. Although Tatum tries to move on and seems to have truly moved on as she follows her attraction to people of different genders and races, Dominguez holds special power over her, a complex combination of fame and the Latino heritage they share. Of course, there is physical attraction, yet this is not a novel of steamy love scenes but rather a young woman’s searing frustration, humiliation, anger with promises not kept, and the angst of ultimately feeling used.

When the novel opens in Chile 2015, Tatum is enjoying sharing a life seeped in art with her partner Vera. It is a phone call from an American journalist, investigating allegations of sexual harassment against Mateo which reopens the floodgate of memories and provides the story in flashback. The emotions felt very raw and real at times, and those moments were 5-star writing. For me, the the pacing was not always steady and occasionally caused me to reread a previous page to see how I missed a segue into the current situation. Some brief scenes with an androgynous character named Mayumi seemed more of an interruption at first but then played a part in the protagonist's ability to evaluate her emotions. I am glad I had an opportunity to read this book and think it would work well for a book club choice since there is something deserving of comment for any reader. Thank you NetGalley and Celadon Books for the opportunity to read this!

This book started so strong and then unfortunately fell so flat. We follow a painfully desperate woman who is in a toxic “relationship” (if you can even call it a relationship) with an older man who is a famous writer. She writes him a fan letter when she is in college and receives an unexpected reply. She quickly becomes infatuated and obsessed with this famous, highly intellectual, older man. This behavior is understandable at her age. BUT this “relationship” continues for a decade, until she is thirty years old. She puts her life, goals, relationships, everything on hold waiting for this good for nothing, mediocre, narcissistic man-child to give her the time of day. Ladies, we must do better. Please value yourselves enough to walk away when something isn’t serving you.

A wonderfully-written, extremely compelling literary fiction debut, revolving around a woman reflecting on the toxic but formative relationship which she had with a famous writer in the wake of sexual harassment allegations against him.

This is definitely a book for the character-focused readers, as most of the plot is just the events of a life; the writing was engaging, the character voice strong and present, and the development of that central relationship was extremely well-done. My only real complaint was that I wanted more of a bridge between the well-adjusted, mature narrator who we saw in the present-day periods and the previous version of herself, stuck in her spiral with the writer, M.

All in all, definitely recommended, and I’m excited to see what the author does next! Thank you so much to Celadon books and Netgalley for the advance copy!