Thank you to Random House Publishing Group - Random House, One World via NetGalley for providing me with this ARC! There were many ways I felt connected to this novel, particularly the depiction of how it feels to be a woman of color at an elite academic institution. The author weaved her commentary into the prose beautifully. There were aspects of this book I was more invested in than others, but overall it was a well balanced book that I enjoyed reading, especially from this author whose work I’ve read before.

As a white woman reader, Catalina opened my eyes on the everyday world of others. The heavy baggage and legacies that some carry on a daily basis while we go on with our life. The life changing hurricane that is immigration and the ramifications of the laws. What about those the system forgot?

The story of that young woman of color, from modest origins, making her way through the elitist environment that is Harvard and the empty caring words and actions is eye opening. How often do we just give to a cause to make ourselves feel good and forget about it the next second. The other brings heavy subjects like generational trauma, abandonnent and identity quest.

This book, while short, hits right where it needs to. The journey of Catalina as she discovers her true self and try to break free from her past and the expectations of others was touching. We all go through that phase in life. But who does it when everything is on the line?

There’s a gripping vulnerability to this book that isn’t lost amidst how funny the storytelling frequently is. The main character in this is absolutely chaotic in a way that is incredibly amusing, adds to the plot, but doesn’t distract from the commentary being made. This book felt nostalgic, frequently an amalgam of love, grief, longing, and humor. I don’t share any of the defining experiences that the main character goes through, but reading this book felt like a glimpse into the complicated emotions that such experiences might have brought about. I appreciated how plain the writing makes it that there is nuance to every feeling that Catalina has towards the circumstances of her existence. Every line of this book made me feel something, be it shock, outrage, sadness, amusement, or bewilderment. There were many topics addressed and parts of this book that were very heavy and emotional, 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, but rather simply another part of Catalina and her life for the reader to embrace.

None of the characters were definable by any one thing. They didn’t feel like archetypes and they evoked a multitude of emotions throughout the book. Even characters that I thought would act or respond to a situation in a certain way consistently surprised me. This book’s characters felt like real, unpredictable people, who were at times harsher, less shallow, or more easygoing than expected.

There were times when I felt that the timeline of the story was a bit confusing. Especially at the beginning of the book, things jump around a lot throughout the course of Catalina’s life, and I had a hard time pinning down what year it was when the story being told took place and determining if the story was being told by Catalina while was in her senior year or in retrospect by an older version of herself.

The story told was impressively complex and poignant; the fairly short number of pages it was written in do nothing to lessen its impact. The shifts in the narration take only as much time as necessary for clarity—it is a fast-paced story that I found impossible to be bored with. This is definitely outside of the genres and types of books that I normally read, but I’m genuinely so glad that I read it.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Groups & NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this ebook in exchange for an honest review.

Absolutely gorgeous lit fic. It’s shockingly short though, NetGalley had it as <200 pages, so keep that in mind. Thanks for the arc

Funny, smart, wry, and witty. "Catalina" is destined to become a campus-novel classic. It was a pleasure to spend time in the world of this novel.