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 am so thankful to the publisher, the author, and Netgalley for granting me advanced access to this thriller before it hits shelves on June 25, 2024. This one wasn't for me, but I am still so thankful for the opportunity to read and review it.

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."

The narrator’s voice was so refreshing and unique. I really enjoyed the writing and storyline. I will definitely keeping my eyes peeled for Villavicencio’s future books.

I really wanted to like this book--I loved Villavicencio's THE UNDOCUMENTED AMERICANS. However, I found this novel difficult to get into, somewhat unfocused, and the voice was not to my taste.

I received this from Netgalley.com.

Kind of meandering, difficult to follow, found the characters and topic uninteresting.

2.25☆

A coming-of-age story about an undocumented Harvard student. Even tho i felt sorry for Catalina. I thought she was quite hard to like. The story was allover the place cofusuing and hard to follow at times.

have been excited about this book since I first heard about it. If you know me, you know that my favorite book of all time is The Idiot by Elif Batuman, so Catalina was right up my alley. I really enjoyed the humor and Catalina's strange encounters at Harvard. There are so many generalizations about Latin America and undocumented immigrants that this book subverts, addresses head on, and humorously explores. This book read like a big whirlwind, but slowed down in the third act for me. I wish the end was a bit more fleshed out, but I enjoyed Catalina's voice so much I didn't mind all that much in the end. Overall, I am so glad I read this and I laughed out loud quite a few times.

All the stars! The Undocumented Americans was an amazing book that every one should read and I was very excited for this novel. Catalina gives you the story young women balancing her family, her place at Harvard and her undocumented status. The sarcasm and humor is biting, frequently breaking the fourth wall. I loved this.

Thanks to NetGalley and One World for the chance to read and review.

I really wanted to like this one, but it was ultimately just too meandering and stream-of-consciousness for me. It took me two whole weeks despite being a relatively short book. As others have said, it very much reminded me of The Idiot by Elif Batuman, both in style and setting and in that the authors are much too smart for me.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review!

This! Was! Incredible!! I have nothing but good things to say about this book. One of the best things I’ve read this year, it managed to be so much at once: Emotional, funny, heartbreaking, messy. The writing isn’t exactly lyrical but is still somehow so beautiful? Catalina’s voice was compelling and drew me in and I could easily follow her character for a long time. I implore everyone to read it, even to just read about the stresses and heartbreaks of this particular life that is a reality for so many. It opens your eyes to the things an undocumented person has to go through that you would never even think about.

ARC provided by NetGalley

This story follows Catalina who is finishing school but as an undocumented person, she’s not sure what her next steps will be. The writing style was super interesting where it felt like a stream of consciousness most of the time.

I’m really interested to see what this author writes next!

Thank you to Netgalley and One World for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

I wanted to like this book because the subject matter of undocumented immigrants, particularly as it relates to DACA, is important. I simply never grew fond of Catalina, or her family, or any of the characters in the book. Being inside Catalina’s head for the entire book was not a place I enjoyed. It made the book seem much longer than its 223 pages.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book to read and review.

Amazing book. As a Harvard student, I found it very relatable. I also appreciated reading about the experience of an undocumented student. Would definitely recommend!

I started this book and then put it down for a while due to the off putting stream of consciousness style. But then I decided to finish it because I wanted to see what happened to Catalina, an undocumented immigrant living with her grandparents and attending Harvard. I would like to say the novel garnered my interest on my second try, but alas, I can’t. Catalina’s mental state spirals downward as the novel continues, and I could understand neither the direction of her self-destructive behavior nor the purpose of her story. She loves James Joyce, and if you do too, you might enjoy this book. I, however, am not a Bloom’s Day celebrant.

Catalina is an undocumented immigrant who came to America from Ecuador as a child to live with her grandparents after her parents were killed in an accident. Her grandparents are also undocumented. Accepted at Harvard, this fictional memoir recounts her experiences there. Pre DACA, a major obstacle for this Ivy League educated young woman is that she will not be able to secure a job upon graduation.

This short book (224 pages) exposes the insecurities, fears, and emotional toll experienced by undocumented individuals and families. It is written mostly as stream of consciousness with quite a bit of fantasizing which for me took away from the importance of the topics explored. This style will not be for everyone; others may find it a vibrant, contemporary read. I did enjoy the references to Latin American history and culture.