A heartbreaking coming-of-age novel, Catalina follows the titular character as she navigates her senior year at an Ivy League school while facing the reality of what she may or may not be able to do next as an undocumented American.

Catalina is strong, smart, quick-witted, funny, and increasingly jaded in this Pre-DACA novel. This short novel dives into not only the financial and political toll around being undocumented, but the mental and emotional toll. The stream-of-consciousness style of the writing made it so eye-opening and understandable what life can be like for undocumented Americans.

Catalina is a senior at Harvard, preparing to graduate to a world of uncertainty - she's undocumented. The Dream Act keeps losing. She's both excited and terrified about her future.

Catalina, the book and the character, are both very funny. She has a wry sense of humor and the book is full of pop cultural references from learning "about American electoral politics...from what Jon Stewart explained on The Daily Show" to musing about her potential boyfriend: "If I made my eyes glaze over, like really glaze over, he looked like the drummer from the Strokes".

The humor and self-awareness make Catalina and her plight real. As a reader, you care about her, and this is the genius to Villavicencio's novel - making the stories you hear about in the news come alive with a seemingly real character. She knows what she's writing about, as she's one of the first undocumented immigrants to graduate from Harvard. It makes me want to read "The Undocumented Americans", her non-fiction work published in 2020.

My thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for the digital ARC.

Thank you Random House Publishing Group - Random House | One World for allowing me to read and review Catalina on NetGalley.

Published: 07/23/24

Stars: 2

A complete miss and waste of my time. I didn't like any of the characters. I didn't see a story. I did see profanity and shock sex scene. Absolutely not for me.

A powerful and evocative novel that delves into the complexities of identity, family, and the search for belonging. The story follows Catalina, a young woman navigating the challenges of her life while grappling with her heritage and personal struggles. Villavicencio's writing is both lyrical and raw, bringing Catalina’s experiences to life with emotional depth. The book stands out for its honest and introspective look at personal and cultural identity. Villavicencio’s storytelling is engaging, and the characters feel vividly real, making it a compelling read.

Catalina is a DACA student attending Harvard University and living with her undocumented grandparents. The fears and uncertainty about her future drive the story. Catalina's inner dialog, at times, is hard to keep up with, but her panic about what the future may hold for her is clear. I found myself understanding and empathizing with the story of the dreamers through Catalina's stream of consciousness. Although the character is fictional, the story is as real as it gets for countless people. The book is short amd reads fast. Thanks to Netgalley and publishers for the opportunity to read this advanced copy of Catalina in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for this ARC of Catalina. I am usually skeptical of coming of age novels but Catalina was refreshing and I found that the chaos with which the author navigates this story to be pretty in line with what this book is about, which is Catalina navigating life at Harvard as an Ecuadorian immigrant. It's pretty unhinged and will keep you reeling, and while I am telling myself that was the point, I'm not entirely sure if it actually was.

Villavicencio always has a really unique way of balancing the content and style of her stories, and her debut novel is no exception. She delivers observations about the world—pop culture, university life, the government, whatever—with precise, concise judgments; she also waxes poetic on (random?) tangents, like a two page daydream about an imagined life with a male friend. I can't say it bothers me, but it's certainly a choice, and one that keeps the story moving along but also keeps the reader on their toes.

Having read Villavicencio's nonfiction before, I can't say that this novel makes me want to rush out to buy whatever she comes up with next, but I think I'll be thinking about Catalina (both the character and the book) for quite a while. I think it would be a good fit for readers of Win Me Something or Real Life.

Thank you to Random House/One World for the opportunity to read and review!

Thoroughly enjoyed this book. I read this in one sitting on an airplane and not once did I feel like putting it down. Throughout the novel I was waiting for some big twist or crisis to happen, and while plenty goes down, this felt more like a snapshot in our main character’s life. Each character felt real and microagressions and outright racism was shown in such a realistic way that I truly felt like I have met a few of these people before. It left me with plenty to think about - as did Undocumented Americans - and I can’t wait to see what this author continues to create. Thank you NetGalley!

A wonderful fiction debut by the author of The Undocumented Americans. This was a wonderful (fictionalized) account of the year in the life of an undocumented woman who came to live with her also undocumented grandparents. I didn't love the stream of consciousness format of the novel, but the author's beautiful writing and compelling story was enough to make me overlook that.

I am not typically someone who likes character-driven books and I was really worried to see that this book was for people who liked Sally Rooney and/or "My Year of Rest and Relaxation." HOWEVER, this book greatly exceeded all my expectations.

Catalina is a wonderful character study of a DREAMER raised in NYC who is in her third year at Harvard. It was sad, complex, and incomplete. Catalina is a messy character who wants to be loved but doesn't really seem to love anything herself. It also deals with the really uncomfortable feelings associated with white Americans studying your culture and acting like they're the experts. And of course, the fact that the "artifacts" were things stolen from burial sites, etc. If that wasn't enough, it talks about being undocumented in the late aughts and being raised by your grandparents while the rest of your family, who you'll never get to see, are back home in Ecuador.

It was such a sad book but so beautifully told and I just wanted to give Catalina a hug.

I loved this author’s memoir, but I had a hard time with this book.it felt very ya, but it was a coming of age college story so that could be why. Good writing

Thank you to Random House and Netgalley for this advance copy.

Catalina is a fascinating novel about a year in the life of a Dreamer. Catalina is not a legal resident in the US but gets into Harvard, navigating the precariousness of her life while navigating her feelings about being at Harvard and spending time with people who don't have the same stresses in life. I appreciated how this novel was succinct yet full of life and depth. Catalina is naturally all over the place, pulled to her family while still trying to be independent.
I thought this was an interesting portrait and hope others will enjoy it as I did.

Thank you to Net Galley and Random House/One World for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. This story seems to be a bit of autofiction following Catalina as she attends an Ivy League college, is undocumented and navigates life. She came from Central America, was raised by her undocumented grandparents in Queens and seemed to achieve the pinnacle by going to Harvard. Overall, the writing and voice of Catalina She's on the brink of graduating, has been quite successful but is confronted by a world that provides so many an obstacles and challenges that most graduates from Harvard don't face. I found the way the story was written and the voice of Catalina to be a bit grating and to a certain extent whiny. I didn't find much compelling, new or interesting in the story that hasn't been written about in other novels that deal with similar topics. This was a bit of a disappointment.

I have a lot of feelings about this book and it is one that stays with you and keeps you thinking after you are finished. You really feel like you get to know Catalina. She is complex and Villavicencio does an amazing job showing the conflicting thoughts and feelings Catalina sometimes has as she makes her way as an undocumented American. Catalina was orphaned as a young girl and came to live in America with her grandparents. I love the different relationships Catalina has with each of her grandparents. It isn't always cozy, but is full of affection. Catalina is now a student at Harvard and there is the backdrop of America trying to get the DREAM Act passed. Catalina as a character is often messy and conflicted but comes across as wholly authentic. There is interesting commentary on academia and museums - preservation and colonization. All issues are raised in a way that deals with complexities and isn't just a diatribe. The pasts of the book dealing with deportation and the lengths that people are willing or not willing to go through with our immigration system were my favorites. Overall this is a thought-provoking book with layers.

Thanks to Netgalley and Random House Publishing for an ARC for review purposes.

An oh so uncomfortable campus novel from the point of view of Catalina--Harvard student and DREAMer. You can recognize types of people you know in the characters. The language here is lovely but I didn't connect with the story itself as much as I hoped to given how much I adored her nonfiction work The Undocumented Americans. I'll continue reading her fiction though.

ARC received from NetGalley

This book was all over the place. The premise of this novel is essentially about an Ecuadorian immigrant as she navigates her life as a first-generation student at Harvard, living with her immigrant grandparents who raised her, and everything else that comes when growing up. At first, I really liked Catalina as a main character. She was smart, dedicated, and loved her family and everything they did for her. But there was so many times as I was reading where she would talk about one thing, and then the story would take me to something so odd and out of place. Especially towards the end, where she would daydream about a man she didn't really like, I thought we had a sudden time skip happen because it changed topics way too quickly. And then the story shifted to her grandfather getting a deportation notice and she just pulled a season 4 Rory Gilmore. She threw herself out of a car (this I thought was another daydream of hers until she actually did it), she slept with her "love interest" than later went to a Dennys and sat at a booth with a random man who she let finger her (????). And the end wasn't worth it either. The topic of deportation, especially if it's a parental figure, is a very sensitive topic for me when I'm reading, so the ending being the way that it was was absolutely not it for me.

Overall, I didn't always like our main character, the formatting of the story was too sporadic for me to follow along, and the ending was absolutely not for me. I really wanted to love this book because the cover is absolutely stunning:(((

<i>There's something about the faces of everyone in my family and in mine. I think you can see in our eyes the kind of sadness, which is in two places at once--mourning the past, grieving the future. Sad in a historically significant and visually satisfying way. Looking sad like it's your job.</i>

In 2010, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio was attending Harvard when she wrote about her experiences being undocumented. Later, she would be on the shortlist for the National Book Award for her non-fiction book, The Undocumented Americans. Now she has written a novel about a young woman in her last year at Harvard who is undocumented and dealing with all the uncertainties people do when they are about to be launched into the world and dealing with the constant stress of being undocumented and worrying about her grandparents who are also undocumented and also getting older, so the kinds of jobs that are open to them are becoming more difficult. Catalina also wants to have fun, have sex, fall in love, like any other girl her age. She's also an over-thinker and very, very smart.

Catalina begins as a campus novel and ends as something else. For the first half of the book, it felt like a riff on Elif Batuman's Selin novels, with an uncertain but bright and engaging heroine navigating Harvard social life, trying her hand at flirtation and finding out more about herself.

<i>I too could quote Charles Bukowski. I could wear headbands. Learn to drink port. You can be whoever you want in America.</i>

But when the winter break sends her back to sit in her grandparents's tiny apartment while her boyfriend tours South America, an activity she can't share as she lacks the money and, as an undocumented American, lacks a passport. And once back in Queens, she is back in her grandparents's precarious world, where a toothache is a financial emergency and a surprise visit by the ICE puts her grandfather at risk of deportation. This second part of the book is both the strongest and the most scattershot part of the novel, with so many elements crammed into a single space that most get a quick, intriguing mention only to be overtaken by the next six things Catalina does or thinks or reacts to. The flaws of this novel are all those common in debut novels and there are far more elements to be impressed by. This is definitely an author to watch.

Catalina
by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
A fresh look at the Dreamer movement from a new perspective. This book shows the varied nature of the Dreamer, movement. That Illegal immigration especially children can have more complications and nuances then an obvious political movement. Catalina is a Dreamer, her parents died in Ecuador when she was a child. She was shipped to her grandparents in America as a child. The move was traumatic for an already scared child. It is her grandfathers legacy that causes her problems as an adult. His illegal immigration, and problems with ICE, and deportation haunted her throughout her time in the United States. Yet, all she really knows is this life. Going to Harvard, has not helped the situation as she could be protected but her grandparents could not. Its a heart rending book of family, pride, and the price we pay for safety, choice, and freedom.

A candid auto-fiction novel about Catalina, an undocumented person in the United States told in her brilliant voice. Catalina lives with her grandparents, Ecuadorians, who are themselves undocumented. As we join Catalina for about a year in her life we learn a lot about the trials and tribulations of being an undocumented person in the country. Despite being a brilliant student and despite her upcoming Harvard graduation, she has no prospects of getting a job. The novel also touches upon various aspects of South American history, contemporary American politics and literary references. There is no plot as such this is more a character study and has to be read with that mindset. I quite enjoyed the feisty sarcasm and dry humour and really loved the bits about south american history and heritage. I also liked how the author has brought out how people of a different culture and ethnicity try and impose their own point of view on the culture and history of others thereby causing a distorting effect. Of course there was a lot happening in this short book and I skimmed over some of the campus stuff. Read it if you like a contemporary American immigrant story.
Thank you Netgalley, One World Publishing and Karla Cornejo Villavicencio for the ARC

Catalina, by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, is a firecracker of a novel about an undocumented young woman who came to the U..S. from Ecuador at the age of five to live with her undocumented grandparents.

Brilliant, Catalina is now a student at Harvard who wants to be a writer, and the star of her story. She is an hilarious and self-absorbed young woman who can see American culture from a unique perspective as an outsider. However, Catalina can only intern rather than earn a paycheck as she has no social security number, she cannot leave the country, and she begins to mentally disintegrate when contemplating life after college where careers that pay under the table are few and far between.

The novel is also a devastating takedown of academia which studies indigenous people like Catalina without really understanding — or even wanting to understand — their plight. There will always be a part of Catalina, like the South American khipu which figures prominently in the novel, that will always remain unknown to the colonizer. 4.0 out of 5.0 stars. Highly recommended.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a complimentary advance copy of this book.