Real Rating: 3.75* of five

"No matter where you go, there you are" meets "The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new." Socrates and Buckaroo Banzai in one sentence has to be a new record of weirdness even for me. When I read a book with Spanish and English side by side, I'm inspired to make connections. In my daily life I'm surrounded by Spanish-speaking folk, I grew up a denizen of La Frontera, I was taught Spanish in school...read my first foreign-language novel in junior high Spanish class...I am, in short, at home.

That is how this novel felt to me, like a homecoming. I'm upset that many of y'all will avoid the read like it gots the cooties *because* there's another language in it. Some because there's transgender representation. Some because it doesn't center, or to the best of my recollection contain, any wypipo. (Look it up.) Adding to the reasons I liked the read, and others won't, is New York City. That great cultural lightning rod with its century-old antisemitic epithet, its much-maligned by flyover country denizens Harlemness, that haven and home for Others. How that's a bad thing, honestly, is beyond my scope of imagination. I see it like Sal and Charo do, a place not to be defined by others but a place to do one's own defining. How can that be bad?

Sal, who provides the bulk of the narrative, is coming of age in a place as little unlike his home as he can bear. The Latine diaspora in New York City has enough cultural similarity and still enough cover to hide from the ugliness of his past. He's been traumatized, as a queer boy I don't imagine I need to spell it out for you how, and feels safer in New York. After all, it's harder to hate people when you don't know them, right? Disappearing into a crowd is safety?

Hmmm. Us oldsters are pretty sure that's fallacious already on first hearing but young people need to learn the hard way. Which explains in part why there are fewer old people than young ones.

1990s New York is the one I remember best. Things were changing and that's utterly ensorcelling to young people seeking personal change. The problem comes when the young person ignores the fact that change isn't a function of location, as Peter Weller memorably says in the clip linked above. Socrates (allegedly; at this distance in time, who really knows who formulated the thought?) elucidates the other issue Sal confronts in his desperate bid to change by escaping what he was told he was. It isn't until he meets a role model for his queerness who, like him, is a Black man but is also from the US, that he begins to *build* an identity not run from a label slapped on him...regardless of who's doing the slapping.

Charo might have the harder task. She does NOT want to be a punching bag for some man, in sexual slavery to him and a breeding machine for babies. Guess what. Moving to New York City on the cusp of a new century, a new millennium, doesn't change her less-obvious struggle any more than it does Sal's. Luckily for her, this is a soulbrother she's found, this is a connection they won't break. Sal is a role model for moving forward into being, into crafting, a new self. I expect these kids did just fine for themselves, and that is a great feeling to end a read on.

So why not more stars? Because, even though I get that the chaotic timeline with flashbacks and PoV changes is very much the way we live our lives in reality—complete with intrusive ruminations—fiction needs more order than life to work as a story. This book was, from the get-go, going to be more than one story with more than one main character. What happened was what so often does: One of the characters has more to say to the author than the other. It comes down to page-time. Sal's is the dominant PoV but we're more acquainted with him than really close friends, as a single PoV novel allows us to feel.

The truth is that's not a flaw when it's by design as it is here...we're apparently meant to feel we're conversationally getting to know a person's history and life events...but that carries an inherent issue of diminished investment in that PoV. When we don't focus hard on something, due to different kinds of interruptions in narrative flow, we don't necessarily get the same level of reward for our attention.

It's a braided-stories novel, a set of vignettes with beginnings and middles, whose ends we mostly know from their being flashbacks. It's a valid storytelling technique simply not one I love with the kind of passion I had to invest in this very involving set-up taking place in a world I knew, and remember fondly. So three and three-quarters of a star subjectively awarded.

Objectively I laud this debut novel by an author with a resonant voice, and encourage you to encourage him and his publisher by reading his book.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC of this novel. This is a late 90s/early aughts story of new Dominican migrants in NYC. Sal, a young gay man, and Charo, a new wife and mother, are struggling to adjust to their new lives and trying to escape the parts of their pasts that drove them away from DR in the first place. Through new friends, they learn to define themselves outside of the suffocating family and societal roles they grew up with. I especially loved the flashbacks to gay culture in DR, and the descriptions of Charo's family dynamics. As a character, Sal fell a bit flat, and his struggles were not as interesting as Charo's. The book skipped around between characters and time periods and lacked focus. I wish that it had been tightened up or perhaps turned into short stories. The author is a good writer and I enjoyed the book regardless.

Loca follows two twenty-something adults from their early years in The Dominican Republic to their lives in The Bronx and Pennsylvania leading up to Y2K. Charo is straight and Sal, her best friend and a science nerd, is gay. The author does a great job of tracking the difficulty of their lives both as immigrants and, for Sal, as a gay man. The description of the life of immigrants in The Bronx is particularly gritty and harrowing. They both work extremely hard at several low-wage jobs and money is a constant concern. Charo wrestles with the demands of being a wife and mother in a macho culture in the States and Sal joins Charo in The Bronx after fleeing the violent death of his best friend in the Dominican Republic. Sal and Charo's paths meet and diverge as each struggles to belong.

The book features a large cast of their friends and lovers The author digresses at a couple of points to give lengthy backstories on some of these secondary characters. I thought the writing was fine but the pacing of the book is slow and the two main characters seem to wander (emotionally and physically) until the final few pages when they make some important decisions to try to get their lives on track. There is really not much forward motion or build in the book. Both main characters make so many bad decisions that we lose a good deal of sympathy for them. They seem two lost souls who have difficulty communicating with their friends and lovers. I was very pleased to learn more about the particular challenges of Dominicans in the US by an own voices writer --even if I had to do a fair bit of translating.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

I was having a hard time putting my thoughts together to write this review, but I’ve now realized that it’s because this book just didn’t make me feel anything. Positive or negative, I felt nothing. It’s pretty rare for a book to leave my mind so blank.

I really don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong with this book, though. The writing itself was good and I highlighted a number of portions and quotes while reading that I thought were either beautifully written or said something important about one of the themes of the book (i.e. race, sexual identity, relationships, etc.).

One issue I had was the way the book itself is structured. This bounces back and forth between present and past, which I typically enjoy in a novel, but here it feels disjointed and I frequently found myself lost. I wish there was some indication at the start of each chapter as to what year we were in so that I didn’t have to try to look for context clues so much. I was focusing on making sure I knew where/when I was instead of the story itself.

I’m glad I read this on my Kindle because there is a lot of Spanish. There are often full sentences in Spanish and I had to use the translator on my Kindle to make sure I wasn’t missing anything important. This of course makes sense because the two main characters are Dominican, but if you don’t speak at least a little Spanish, I do think you’ll miss some things.

I also, shockingly, didn’t feel much of anything for the characters. Their relationships to each other felt surface level. Sal and Charo are supposed to be best friends, yet there really wasn’t any point in this story where I could see, feel, or believe that. I was also looking forward to the found family element promised to me by the synopsis, but was left disappointed by those relationships, too.

Overall, this was fine. I would have liked to have felt more immersed in the story, more attached to the characters, but instead I felt I was held at arm’s length.

Alejandro Heredia’s Loca is a stunning and deeply emotional novel that I know will stay with me for a long time. The characters, their relationships, and the emotions woven throughout the story made this a truly special read. While it took me a minute to fully grasp the shifting time periods, once I settled into the rhythm of the narrative, I found myself completely immersed in Loca’s world.

This book takes on a lot—identity, queerness, immigration, and the experience of being Hispanic in the U.S.—and yet it never feels overwhelmed by these themes. Instead, Heredia expertly threads them together in a way that feels natural and deeply personal. The pacing is slow at times, but I actually appreciated that; it gave me space to sit with the characters and their emotions, to feel the weight of their experiences. Not much happens in terms of plot, but that’s part of what makes Loca so powerful. Sometimes, life is about the small moments, the everyday struggles, and the quiet realizations.

I loved this book for its honesty, its tenderness, and the way it lingers in your mind long after you turn the last page. Loca isn’t just a story—it’s an experience, and one that I’ll be thinking about for a long time.

Thanks to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for a chance to read this stellar eARC.

Loca by Alejandro Heredia is set in late 1990s NYC and with flashbacks to adolescence in the Dominican Republic. It follows Sal, a gay man, and Charo, his female best friend, as they both navigate what they want out of life and their romantic relationships. It really brought the experience of afro-Latinx migrants to life, and you gradually learn about both their motivations for leaving the DR in the first place. The book focuses a lot on the what it is that ties us to a place and what pushes us to leave (or to stay) - staying with the comfort of what’s known versus taking a risk on the unknown. I really enjoyed the parts set in the DR where you get to see the characters through their adolescent friendships and coming to terms with their gender and sexuality. I felt the narrative had more of a timeless quality, rather than being rooted specifically in the late 1990s (references to the millennium bug aside!). Overall, a really solid and engaging debut and I look forward to seeing more from this author in the future.

A thoughtful and thought provoking character driven novel about two friends making their way in New York. Sal and Charo have been friends since high school and it is this friendship that is at the heart of the novel. Both have challenges but they find solace in each other and the community they make. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. A very good read.

3⭐️ A queer story about two best friends who migrate to NYC from the Dominican Republic in search of a better life, only to be trapped by the very things they were running from.
I loved how queer this story was and some elements hit close to home.
I felt a bit overwhelmed by the multiple timelines, POVs and side characters, which ultimately made this feel overly ambitious and unresolved.
The overarching story about self discovery, found family and breaking free from expectation.
While I think this could’ve benefited from a more focused approach, I found it emotional and heartfelt.

I am a sucker for a great story set in NYC. Growing up as a Latina in the city at this time (I was in my 20s) in 1999, I am very familiar with the diaspora of Latinos at the time and in this place. Although, I am Puerto Rican, I am especially familiar with the Dominican diaspora having attended a high school where the primary Latino population is Dominican, and having Dominican family.

Reading this book was like returning home for me. Sal and Charo are reminders of the friends and family I grew up with and their story is truly representative of many I have know. The author accuracy with NYC atmosphere is amazingly accurate for the time.

Those who enjoyed books like How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water or Dominica by Angie Cruz and interested in the Urban Latino Diaspora, specifically diaspora I strongly recommend this book.

Thank you Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC. My opinions are my own.

Thank you Netgalley for this arc. I really enjoyed this and the characters. I would recommend reading this book. I rated it a 4 stars.

Sal and Charo, the main characters of LOCA, are followed as they deal with relationships, abandonment, and a need for belonging over time. Very thoughtful at the sentence level and refreshingly non-linear!Every character in Heredia's work is meticulously nuanced; they are strong, imperfect, courageous, self-centered, inquisitive, afraid, humorous, tragic, honest, and they seem just as real as you and I do. The way that LOCA manipulates time enables the reader to appreciate this subtlety in every character.I found myself appreciating their growth, such as Charo's path and eventual realization of the type of woman she wished to be.When characters would do the very human thing of going against their inclinations, like Sal calling Vance for a follow-up interview even though he knew he would love the job, I was also annoyed (in the BEST way possible). I often feel this mixture of adoration and resentment for both myself and the individuals I care about the most. Because of this, I see LOCA as an essential mirror, and I'm so happy that I've had the experience!

i absolutely LOVED the characters but found the book sorta slipped as it went on. at the start, the characters were interesting and the story was cool, but near the end some new characters were underdeveloped. 4 stars. tysm for thea rc.

This book is an endearing and often painful look into the lives of two immigrants at the end of the second millennium, exploring identities of what it means to be gay, black, a woman, and an immigrant in 1999 New York City.

This book follows Sal and Charo, two immigrants from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic who are making their way in a world that often times works against them. I thought the characterization was phenomenal in this book. I really felt I had a great grasp of who they were and I couldn’t help but to root for them, despite all their mistakes.

In my opinion, this book doesn’t really have much of a solid plan and is more “slice of life” in nature, which doesn’t bother me. That being said, be prepared for slower pacing in this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for this ARC!

Heredia presents rich characters and perfectly imaginable setting.

I struggled a bit at the beginning - you're tossed right into a group of lives so you're growing with the characters, and if it's not a world you're familiar with, prepare yourself to really take note of every word - you've just entered into a world where immigration, gender, acculturation, assimilation, queerness, and coming of age all collide. It doesn't take too long until you're fully immersed in these characters' lives.

It's important to remember, too, that this takes place in the 1990s - just out of an AIDS epidemic and not entirely (even in New York) the easiest time to be gay or trans. When people found their families and safe places, it got deep quickly, just like this book did.

I have a degree in American Studies (that includes ALL of the Americas) - this is a text that, if I were a professor, I'd be recommending to students or even using as a text. It really touches on so much - time, place, history, culture, and being young in New York (which really is an experience all on its own, no matter what your story is).

This is a GREAT debut! There should be a lot of buzz surrounding this book. It was beautiful and raw. Excited to share this with my friends.

Wow, this book feels like home. As someone who grew up and spent time in and near the areas covered during that time period, I'm so grateful this book was written. It captured what it was like to be part of the diaspora in the 90's. In this book I see myself, my parent's friends, my cousins, and others I crossed paths with.

Loca follows Sal and Charo's lives from childhood in the Dominican Republic to their adulthood in the Bronx and beyond. All of the characters are so well written, these feel like people from my past and present in so many ways. The writing drew me in right away. This book tackles big questions and tackles them well. What is it like to be queer? To love a queer person? To try to make a living in a world that isn't what you grew up with? What is it like to be a lover? A friend? A mother? To be oneself?

This really brings together the spirit of a Junot Diaz writing and the tv show Pose. This has been exactly what I have been needing, it was beautiful. I loved it not just because I relate to it, but because it was well written. I felt all the characters served their purpose well and the stories told were at a rhythm and organization that I liked. These are compelling human stories mirrored in book forms. Excellent and I can't wait for my loved ones to read this book.

Many thanks to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for allowing me to read the ARC for review.
#SimonBooks @SimonBooks

sal & charo's friendship is the heart of this novel, and i couldn’t get enough of it. they’ve been through so much together and some tough shit since high school in the DR, and we meet them in this book in their mid-twenties, now navigating life in the Bronx. sal is a lonely gay man struggling to rebuild his life after an incredibly painful exit from the island, while charo is a young mom, still trying to figure out who she is beyond the roles life has given her. their bond is everything — raw, messy, and so beautiful. Watching them grow, evolve, and support each other felt so real and grounding. itt was like seeing two people truly find themselves, with each other’s love and trust as their anchor.

the side characters also felt incredibly fleshed out, each one bringing something important to the story. even when they weren’t front and center, they all felt like they had lives and stories of their own — and that’s a testament to Alejandro Heredia’s talent. i especially loved how we got little glimpses into some of their lives, like Don Julio. it added so much depth and richness. i am completely biased because i'm obsessed with Latinx authors and stories and i promise myself i am going to read more of them this year, but Alejandro's debut hit me in all the right ways.

i really can’t wait to see what he does next. this book left me feeling seen and full of emotion, and i'm excited to read more books from him.

4.5 stars.
thank you Simon & Schuster for my copy!

Central characters Sal & Charo have been friends since high school in the DR and we meet them in their mid-twenties in the Bronx - Sal a lonely gay man struggling to find his footing after an incredibly traumatic exit from the island and Charo a young Mom also searching for her own identity. There is a ton of character development in this story as these two grow alongside one another and I loved how their relationship and trust anchors each other - it felt very true to me and I found their relationship beautiful. There are plenty of other compelling minor characters in this novel which I really enjoyed as well - every character seems so real and fleshed out, no matter how much time they receive in the overall novel/plot. I loved this debut - the characters all felt so well embodied and real to me. I loved how we got to do little deep dives into some of the minor characters (Don Julio!). I am biased because I LOVE Latinx authors and stories, but I'm thrilled with Alejandro Heredia's first novel and will be excited to follow his career!!

Gripping book about the search for love and friendship in the challenging worlds of immigrant and gay America. Heartbreaking and pessimistic, but sadly realistic.

Childhood friends Sal and Charo relive their chaotic Dominican early years as they navigate life as young adult immigrants in New York City. The many friends and acquaintances each meets along their journeys are colorful, troubled, and caring in their own fractured ways. I found their stories sad but filled with hopes for better things in their futures and the fortitude to finally examine themselves to find what they truly want and need to move forward.

Their struggles growing up - poverty, sexual identity, violence, and family issues - follow them throughout their lives, but help them grow and accept themselves, identify their own wants and needs, and play a role in their adult relationships.

At times the book was hard to follow as the transitions between present and past were difficult to navigate, much like the lives of Sal and Charo. Overall, a great novel written from the heart.