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Países de origen
Nueva York, 2007. Demetrio, un joven de veinticuatro años, trabaja como repostero en el restaurante francés Le Bourrelet. Este sería su séptimo año como pâtissier, pero el chef propietario, severo pero paternal, siente que el joven debería seguir avanzando en su carrera. Cuando a Demetrio le ofrecen un puesto como jefe de repostería en un restaurante de estrella Michelín, quiere aceptarlo, pero al ser un inmigrante indocumentado, le falta algo crucial: papeles. Aterrorizado por ser descubierto, toma la difícil decisión de volver permanentemente a su país natal, al que no ha regresado desde que era niño. Eso implicará dejar atrás a la única familia que conoce: su querido tío Chus, que lo crio y con quien aún vive. En el vuelo a Madrid, se sienta al lado del atractivo, bromista y sensible Jacobo, un estudiante de la Universidad de Nueva York que vuelve a casa con su familia, aristócrata y ultraconservadora, y al instante surge la química entre ellos.
En bares tenuemente iluminados de Madrid y en playas de piedras alejadas de la ciudad, la relación sutil pero intensa de Demetrio y Jacobo se desenvuelve poco a poco. A Demetrio le tortura el miedo a la intimidad y la ansiedad por su diferencia de clase. A ambos les cuesta aceptar sus identidades y sexualidades, y evitan sus verdaderos sentimientos hasta que una tragedia familiar hace que las vidas de ambos vuelvan a colisionar. Poderosamente sensual y dramática, Países de origen es una historia que sumerge en emociones intensas y conflictos de amor y de pérdida.
En bares tenuemente iluminados de Madrid y en playas de piedras alejadas de la ciudad, la relación sutil pero intensa de Demetrio y Jacobo se desenvuelve poco a poco. A Demetrio le tortura el miedo a la intimidad y la ansiedad por su diferencia de clase. A ambos les cuesta aceptar sus identidades y sexualidades, y evitan sus verdaderos sentimientos hasta que una tragedia familiar hace que las vidas de ambos vuelvan a colisionar. Poderosamente sensual y dramática, Países de origen es una historia que sumerge en emociones intensas y conflictos de amor y de pérdida.
256 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 6, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 160 reviews
February 16, 2023
i’m sorry to report that i *really* didn’t like this one. and i had high hopes going into it, because i thought that reading the story of a spanish man reconnecting with a homeland that he hardly knows (because of having grown up in the us) would be super fascinating, particularly as i myself am spanish (born and raised in the town that the mc was born in, in fact!).
the thing is — nothing about this novel felt genuine. most of it read like a tourist-y guide of spain made entirely palatable for americans, with no genuine reflections on the country, the dictatorship that it went through or even the zeitgeist of the early 2000’s, when spain was going through some major cultural changes (i.e. the legalisation of gay marriage, the consequences of its participation in the iraq war, and so on). fuentes doesn’t paint a disrespectful picture of spain, but his narration is far from truly grasping what the country is like to those of us who have lived here all our lives. i do think that this stems from a major narrative choice, though — simply because reading dialogues in english that are meant to be in spanish didn’t feel right, and i do think that the general sense of alienation that i felt while reading this novel was due to the fact that i simply couldn’t understand why it was written in english to begin with. i get that it would be incredibly hard to write a novel in two different languages, but i really do think this one would have benefitted from including more dialogues in spanish, because they definitely would have helped create a more authentic atmosphere.
my other major issue with this novel is that it all felt overly dramatic. i do get that demetrio is in a very delicate position for most of the story, but his relationship with his uncle chus was a little too cringey (who asks his own nephew if he’s had “big-boy sex” with the boy he likes, for crying out loud?) and i definitely couldn’t care less about jacobo, because their dynamic seemed straight out of skins (yeah, *that* skins. the one with dev patel and nicholas hoult from the late 2000’s). oh, and don’t get me started on the mother-who-has-cancer-just-for-the-two-mcs-to-have-an-excuse-to-reconnect trope, because it makes me sick.
so yeah, i really had high hopes for this novel, but i’m sorry to say that it didn’t deliver at all. i do think the writing was good, and i do think a few changes would make it at least a little bit more worthwhile, but i can’t even say i enjoyed this one. sad beep.
i received an arc of this book from netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
the thing is — nothing about this novel felt genuine. most of it read like a tourist-y guide of spain made entirely palatable for americans, with no genuine reflections on the country, the dictatorship that it went through or even the zeitgeist of the early 2000’s, when spain was going through some major cultural changes (i.e. the legalisation of gay marriage, the consequences of its participation in the iraq war, and so on). fuentes doesn’t paint a disrespectful picture of spain, but his narration is far from truly grasping what the country is like to those of us who have lived here all our lives. i do think that this stems from a major narrative choice, though — simply because reading dialogues in english that are meant to be in spanish didn’t feel right, and i do think that the general sense of alienation that i felt while reading this novel was due to the fact that i simply couldn’t understand why it was written in english to begin with. i get that it would be incredibly hard to write a novel in two different languages, but i really do think this one would have benefitted from including more dialogues in spanish, because they definitely would have helped create a more authentic atmosphere.
my other major issue with this novel is that it all felt overly dramatic. i do get that demetrio is in a very delicate position for most of the story, but his relationship with his uncle chus was a little too cringey (who asks his own nephew if he’s had “big-boy sex” with the boy he likes, for crying out loud?) and i definitely couldn’t care less about jacobo, because their dynamic seemed straight out of skins (yeah, *that* skins. the one with dev patel and nicholas hoult from the late 2000’s). oh, and don’t get me started on the mother-who-has-cancer-just-for-the-two-mcs-to-have-an-excuse-to-reconnect trope, because it makes me sick.
so yeah, i really had high hopes for this novel, but i’m sorry to say that it didn’t deliver at all. i do think the writing was good, and i do think a few changes would make it at least a little bit more worthwhile, but i can’t even say i enjoyed this one. sad beep.
i received an arc of this book from netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
January 3, 2024
the first few pages are intriguing but boy oh boy this was a mess (of the boring variety).
Countries of Origin, a novel exploring the will-they-won't-they dynamic between two very different men, promised to be, if not quite something in the realms of a queer psychosexual thriller, something in the realms of Christopher Bollen's A Beautiful Crime or Scott Spencer's An Ocean Without a Shore. Demetrio, our narrator, is a 20-something pâtissier who works in New York, where he lives with his uncle Chus. Demetrio's existence is jeopardised by a job offer, one that risks exposing his undocumented status. Fearing deportation, Demetrio sees no choice but to leave 'voluntarily', travels to Madrid. During his flight there he begins chatting with Jacobo, a student from an aristocratic family who persuades Demetrio to come stay with him in Madrid.
Jacobo, Demetrio's object of desire, is a painfully boring character whose main characteristic is that he is handsome. We are told the guy is charming, alluring, possibly manipulative, but being told that he is all of these things does not make these things true or actual facets of his persona. Their conversations were awkward, and not in a realistic way, but in a way that seemed strained, unconvincing. Their supposed codependency and love/hate dynamic felt exaggerated and unearned (given that their scenes together did not really succeed in selling their relationship). The novel ends up being all about Demetrio obsessing over this supposedly magnetic guy, yet resenting him becomes of class differences (class differences that are explored with as much nuance as an episode from a soap opera). I am all for tales about seemingly 'normal' people who fall under the spell of more outgoing/successful/mysterious individuals (i mean, barbara vine's the house of stairs is my roman empire), but I have to believe that this person has this irresistible 'aura', and here, well, it was impossible. Jacobo is this rich guy with a convenient sad boi backstory that is meant to make his present-day asshole behaviour sort of okay...but I just never understood how and why our protagonist is drawn to this basic rich-bro-who-thinks-he-is-all-that guy. I found myself more interested in say seeing Demetrio acclimatising to Spain, from every-day things to the working culture. I found myself wanting to learn more about his profession or having more scenes focusing on his new workplace (i admit it, i picked this up soon after watching the bear) but his entire narrative comes to revolve around Jacobo and his family. Countries of Origin turned out to be a surprisingly vanilla portrayal of what was meant to be a tumultuous relationship. The novel's exploration of queerness and masculinity also struck me a shallow.
As usual, the opinions above are entirely subjective and if you are interested in reading this novel I recommend you do so regardless of my review.
Countries of Origin, a novel exploring the will-they-won't-they dynamic between two very different men, promised to be, if not quite something in the realms of a queer psychosexual thriller, something in the realms of Christopher Bollen's A Beautiful Crime or Scott Spencer's An Ocean Without a Shore. Demetrio, our narrator, is a 20-something pâtissier who works in New York, where he lives with his uncle Chus. Demetrio's existence is jeopardised by a job offer, one that risks exposing his undocumented status. Fearing deportation, Demetrio sees no choice but to leave 'voluntarily', travels to Madrid. During his flight there he begins chatting with Jacobo, a student from an aristocratic family who persuades Demetrio to come stay with him in Madrid.
Jacobo, Demetrio's object of desire, is a painfully boring character whose main characteristic is that he is handsome. We are told the guy is charming, alluring, possibly manipulative, but being told that he is all of these things does not make these things true or actual facets of his persona. Their conversations were awkward, and not in a realistic way, but in a way that seemed strained, unconvincing. Their supposed codependency and love/hate dynamic felt exaggerated and unearned (given that their scenes together did not really succeed in selling their relationship). The novel ends up being all about Demetrio obsessing over this supposedly magnetic guy, yet resenting him becomes of class differences (class differences that are explored with as much nuance as an episode from a soap opera). I am all for tales about seemingly 'normal' people who fall under the spell of more outgoing/successful/mysterious individuals (i mean, barbara vine's the house of stairs is my roman empire), but I have to believe that this person has this irresistible 'aura', and here, well, it was impossible. Jacobo is this rich guy with a convenient sad boi backstory that is meant to make his present-day asshole behaviour sort of okay...but I just never understood how and why our protagonist is drawn to this basic rich-bro-who-thinks-he-is-all-that guy. I found myself more interested in say seeing Demetrio acclimatising to Spain, from every-day things to the working culture. I found myself wanting to learn more about his profession or having more scenes focusing on his new workplace (i admit it, i picked this up soon after watching the bear) but his entire narrative comes to revolve around Jacobo and his family. Countries of Origin turned out to be a surprisingly vanilla portrayal of what was meant to be a tumultuous relationship. The novel's exploration of queerness and masculinity also struck me a shallow.
As usual, the opinions above are entirely subjective and if you are interested in reading this novel I recommend you do so regardless of my review.
June 16, 2023
2.5 Stars
If there ever was a book that needed to be longer it’s this one.
I don’t really feel like ripping into this right now, but I will say this text is a prime example of what happens when you don’t let a story breathe. AND what happens when you rely on telling instead of showing.
The main relationship here just feels super underdeveloped and I felt like I was being asked a lot of as a reader to really believe this relationship and other things that happen in the novel, especially because Deme, the narrator, just tells us how things are rather than letting the reader feel or see it. The story mostly just flies by, and it feels like we never really get to spend any meaningful time in scenes with these characters. And I think that’s the biggest complaint I have. This novel absolutely needed more scenes and a lot of the ones that we have feel like they need to be longer.
Also, this very much is a book that just stops rather than ends. It’s very possible the final moment would work as an ending IF everything prior hadn’t been so rushed, underdeveloped, and honestly hard to feel committed to or believe.
(Side note: there’s also a ton of clichéd writing/phrases)
What I will say is Fuentes’ scenic writing is fantastic. There’s such a strong sense of place and the environment that’s colored through the people and especially the various foods we see. The sensory work is really solid.
If there ever was a book that needed to be longer it’s this one.
I don’t really feel like ripping into this right now, but I will say this text is a prime example of what happens when you don’t let a story breathe. AND what happens when you rely on telling instead of showing.
The main relationship here just feels super underdeveloped and I felt like I was being asked a lot of as a reader to really believe this relationship and other things that happen in the novel, especially because Deme, the narrator, just tells us how things are rather than letting the reader feel or see it. The story mostly just flies by, and it feels like we never really get to spend any meaningful time in scenes with these characters. And I think that’s the biggest complaint I have. This novel absolutely needed more scenes and a lot of the ones that we have feel like they need to be longer.
Also, this very much is a book that just stops rather than ends. It’s very possible the final moment would work as an ending IF everything prior hadn’t been so rushed, underdeveloped, and honestly hard to feel committed to or believe.
(Side note: there’s also a ton of clichéd writing/phrases)
What I will say is Fuentes’ scenic writing is fantastic. There’s such a strong sense of place and the environment that’s colored through the people and especially the various foods we see. The sensory work is really solid.
February 18, 2025
Really 2.5 not 3. Some of the dialogue in here was really really really tough to get through. The vibe was like every other sentence had 168 adverbs in it. I do now want to go back to Madrid, so I’ll give it that. The dynamics were just like okay whatever and the plot felt forced and random. But whatever yay Europe yay gay yay New York
February 19, 2024
Clunky, clinical, stilted. No showing, only telling. Felt like reading a recap, not a novel.
July 13, 2023
Cuando era solo un niño, Demetrio se mudó a vivir a Nueva York con su tío Chus. Sus padres fallecieron siendo él aún pequeño y desde entonces su tío es la única familia que conoce. Demetrio ahora es un joven de 24 años que trabaja como pastelero en un pijo y famoso restaurante. Pese a que su trabajo le gustaba antes, ahora no termina de llenarle. Se siente fuera de lugar en todos lados, incluyendo la propia ciudad donde vive, ya que pese a que es el lugar que lo ha visto crecer, lleva años viviendo sin papeles, conviviendo con ese miedo continuo de que en cualquier momento pueda ser deportado. Cansado de la situación, toma la decisión de regresar al país donde nació, España, para tratar de empezar de cero en un lugar que pueda sentir suyo. En el avión de regreso conocerá a Jacobo, con el que rápidamente forjará un vínculo.
Tengo una mezcla extraña de sentimientos a la hora de hablar de este libro porque empezó gustándome mucho y en la segunda mitad se me desinfló bastante. El autor trata temas muy interesantes y lo hace de una manera que me conquistó, pero luego pasaron algunas cosas y dejaron de pasar otras que hizo que desconectara algo de la historia e incluso me enfadara en cierto momento, pero vamos por parte.
"Países de origen" trata bastantes temas, tales como las adicciones, las enfermedades, la pérdida o la muerte, pero lo que más he disfrutado es como muestra el sentimiento de su protagonista de no pertenecer a ningún lugar. Creo que es muy fácil empatizar con Demetrio, como expresa su soledad y ese sensación de no encajar en ningún parte, lo cual lo lleva a tener un profundo complejo de inferioridad. Creo que además hace una buena pareja con Jacobo, ambos están rotos por diferentes motivos y lo expresan de diferentes manera, pero encuentran el refugio que buscan en el otro.
Me gusta como empieza la relación de ambos y como el autor va jugando con ese tira y afloja entre los dos. Hay momentos violentos y hay momentos tiernos, y eso hace que estés enganchado a la evolución de la relación. Sin embargo, hacia la mitad de la novela la cosa se estanca entre ellos dos y ahí es donde sentí que me faltaba algo. No quisiera destripar la historia, pero siento que le faltó mostrar más "intimidad" entre sus protagonistas, pues el autor consigue crear esa tensión sexual constante, que al final siento que no termina de ser resuelta. En cambio, el autor no escatima en detalles a la hora de mostrar de manera explícita esa intimidad en una escena con un personaje femenino, escena que no vino a cuento y que tuvo muy poco sentido para mí.
Es un libro que también juega mucho con el tema de la repostería, ya que su protagonista encuentra esa seguridad que le falta mientras prepara dulces. Creo que si fuera fan del dulce podría haber valorado más esa parte, porque me hubiera sugerido sabores que me gustaría probar, pero el dulce y yo no somos muy amigos. En definitiva, es un libro que disfruté mucho en su primera parte, que consiguió crear un romance que me interesaba, pero que no terminó de ser explotado y eso que tenía muchísimas posibilidades. Me hubiera gustado que fuera un pelín más largo. Creo que es la primera novela del autor, así que tengo ganas de ver que más cosas puede hacer.
Tengo una mezcla extraña de sentimientos a la hora de hablar de este libro porque empezó gustándome mucho y en la segunda mitad se me desinfló bastante. El autor trata temas muy interesantes y lo hace de una manera que me conquistó, pero luego pasaron algunas cosas y dejaron de pasar otras que hizo que desconectara algo de la historia e incluso me enfadara en cierto momento, pero vamos por parte.
"Países de origen" trata bastantes temas, tales como las adicciones, las enfermedades, la pérdida o la muerte, pero lo que más he disfrutado es como muestra el sentimiento de su protagonista de no pertenecer a ningún lugar. Creo que es muy fácil empatizar con Demetrio, como expresa su soledad y ese sensación de no encajar en ningún parte, lo cual lo lleva a tener un profundo complejo de inferioridad. Creo que además hace una buena pareja con Jacobo, ambos están rotos por diferentes motivos y lo expresan de diferentes manera, pero encuentran el refugio que buscan en el otro.
Me gusta como empieza la relación de ambos y como el autor va jugando con ese tira y afloja entre los dos. Hay momentos violentos y hay momentos tiernos, y eso hace que estés enganchado a la evolución de la relación. Sin embargo, hacia la mitad de la novela la cosa se estanca entre ellos dos y ahí es donde sentí que me faltaba algo. No quisiera destripar la historia, pero siento que le faltó mostrar más "intimidad" entre sus protagonistas, pues el autor consigue crear esa tensión sexual constante, que al final siento que no termina de ser resuelta. En cambio, el autor no escatima en detalles a la hora de mostrar de manera explícita esa intimidad en una escena con un personaje femenino, escena que no vino a cuento y que tuvo muy poco sentido para mí.
Es un libro que también juega mucho con el tema de la repostería, ya que su protagonista encuentra esa seguridad que le falta mientras prepara dulces. Creo que si fuera fan del dulce podría haber valorado más esa parte, porque me hubiera sugerido sabores que me gustaría probar, pero el dulce y yo no somos muy amigos. En definitiva, es un libro que disfruté mucho en su primera parte, que consiguió crear un romance que me interesaba, pero que no terminó de ser explotado y eso que tenía muchísimas posibilidades. Me hubiera gustado que fuera un pelín más largo. Creo que es la primera novela del autor, así que tengo ganas de ver que más cosas puede hacer.
June 5, 2023
Highly recommend! For fans of What Belongs to You.
August 30, 2023
[3.5]
Es verdad que hubiera esperado tal vez más perspectivas políticas de esa España de principios de los 2000, o incluso sobre el siempre urgente tema de la migración... Pero creo que este libro va más sobre los viajes interiores, sobre las maneras que tenemos de encontrarnos caminando por las calles que conocemos y las que apenas estamos descubriendo. Entre Nueva York y Madrid, Demetrio vive un coming-of-age cuando se supone que ya es un adulto, y se cuestiona lo que son las raíces, los acentos y las predisposiciones a ser quienes somos. También crece en él, y en quien lea esta novela, el deseo de un verano eterno...
Un debut prometedor de Javier Fuentes. Espero leer más de él pronto.
Es verdad que hubiera esperado tal vez más perspectivas políticas de esa España de principios de los 2000, o incluso sobre el siempre urgente tema de la migración... Pero creo que este libro va más sobre los viajes interiores, sobre las maneras que tenemos de encontrarnos caminando por las calles que conocemos y las que apenas estamos descubriendo. Entre Nueva York y Madrid, Demetrio vive un coming-of-age cuando se supone que ya es un adulto, y se cuestiona lo que son las raíces, los acentos y las predisposiciones a ser quienes somos. También crece en él, y en quien lea esta novela, el deseo de un verano eterno...
Un debut prometedor de Javier Fuentes. Espero leer más de él pronto.
August 10, 2023
Una novela corta pero con temáticas potentes.
January 25, 2024
Una novela muy bien escrita pero que pese a ello nunca termina de despegar del todo y no ofrece un clímax. Aún así, la leí rápido y disfruté haciéndolo.
Lo que me gustó: la prosa es bella, es descriptiva de una manera que estimula la imaginación sin volverse tediosa o detallista, es muy sensorial en lo que respecta a la comida siendo un goce leer todo lo que en ella se describe sobre postres y alimentos, siendo una novela LGBTQ+ no cae en el soft porn para captar el interés de sus lectores.
Lo que no me gustó: los estereotipos, la profundidad dispar con la que se trabajan los personajes —mientras Demetrio parece tener muchas capas, Jacobo no alcanza a perfilarse del todo—, el final parece abrupto y casi como si el editor hubiese dicho “termínalo de una vez”, si bien me gusta que no se centre en lo sexual la casi ausencia de erotismo resulta a ratos un tanto aséptica y moralizante.
En conclusión: me gustó pero no me mató, plantea una relación imperfecta y eso es siempre reconfortante porque estamos demasiado acostumbrados a la ficción romántica edulcorada e inalcanzable. Creo que si bien la novela cae en estereotipos de clase, no comete el mismo error en cuanto a su retrato de la homosexualidad y el machismo internalizado que se da más frecuentemente de lo que se cree en este tipo de relaciones. Lo mejor: cada párrafo donde se describen comidas, aromas, sabores y texturas.
Lo que me gustó: la prosa es bella, es descriptiva de una manera que estimula la imaginación sin volverse tediosa o detallista, es muy sensorial en lo que respecta a la comida siendo un goce leer todo lo que en ella se describe sobre postres y alimentos, siendo una novela LGBTQ+ no cae en el soft porn para captar el interés de sus lectores.
Lo que no me gustó: los estereotipos, la profundidad dispar con la que se trabajan los personajes —mientras Demetrio parece tener muchas capas, Jacobo no alcanza a perfilarse del todo—, el final parece abrupto y casi como si el editor hubiese dicho “termínalo de una vez”, si bien me gusta que no se centre en lo sexual la casi ausencia de erotismo resulta a ratos un tanto aséptica y moralizante.
En conclusión: me gustó pero no me mató, plantea una relación imperfecta y eso es siempre reconfortante porque estamos demasiado acostumbrados a la ficción romántica edulcorada e inalcanzable. Creo que si bien la novela cae en estereotipos de clase, no comete el mismo error en cuanto a su retrato de la homosexualidad y el machismo internalizado que se da más frecuentemente de lo que se cree en este tipo de relaciones. Lo mejor: cada párrafo donde se describen comidas, aromas, sabores y texturas.
May 22, 2025
I found this book randomly on a shelf at work when I was grabbing another book I'd never heard of to put on hold and this cover SUCKED ME IN, but of course, I stayed for the synopsis.
Countries of Origin follows undocumented immigrant and pastry chef Demetrio working for his seventh year at a New York French restaurant in 2007. Although his Chef loves him and Deme sees him as a father figure, Chef tells him he should move on to bigger and better things. Deme eventually gets a job to work at the Four Seasons, but when his fake social security no longer works, he decides to move back 'home' to Spain for good. On the plane ride there he is sat next to a privileged NYU student, Jacobo and there is instant attraction. However, Jacobo is raised in a fascist family, and with that in mind and his internalized homophobia, they never fully get together, but a tragedy in Jacobo's family sets them back on track.
I did want to love this, but I felt like the story was very surface-level despite how much it could have gone into depth. I did like this but it felt a bit too episodic at times. I do think this deserves SO much more hype than it has now and I would completely recommend this. It just didn't land as well with me as I wanted to, but I am looking forward to future Javier Fuentes releases!
Countries of Origin follows undocumented immigrant and pastry chef Demetrio working for his seventh year at a New York French restaurant in 2007. Although his Chef loves him and Deme sees him as a father figure, Chef tells him he should move on to bigger and better things. Deme eventually gets a job to work at the Four Seasons, but when his fake social security no longer works, he decides to move back 'home' to Spain for good. On the plane ride there he is sat next to a privileged NYU student, Jacobo and there is instant attraction. However, Jacobo is raised in a fascist family, and with that in mind and his internalized homophobia, they never fully get together, but a tragedy in Jacobo's family sets them back on track.
I did want to love this, but I felt like the story was very surface-level despite how much it could have gone into depth. I did like this but it felt a bit too episodic at times. I do think this deserves SO much more hype than it has now and I would completely recommend this. It just didn't land as well with me as I wanted to, but I am looking forward to future Javier Fuentes releases!
March 11, 2023
So cinematic! Countries of Origin is a heartbreaking story about queer love and borders, real and imaginary. An impressive debut that I could not put down. I can’t wait to read more novels by this author!
June 24, 2023
Read in a day. Definitely lost the plot in the second half. The dialogue, specifically, was not great. But the first half builds in a delicious way. Good for the beach.
August 11, 2023
I don’t think this will be the book for everyone, and I actually didn’t think it would be the book for me, but it was! Fuentes’ writing was definitely the highlight.
June 16, 2023
The story unfolds in a slow and subdued way. The pacing and the tone remain this way for the entirety of the book. For instance, Jacobo and Demetrio don't enter the "romance" zone till about 2/3 into the book. There's a lot of interiority; Demetrio perseverates throughout the book. All the handwringing doesn't amount to much.
Here I did not experience an emotional journey where I could see why and how they're attracted to each other. The locations of NYC and Spain were prominent as were the kitchens of upscale restaurants.
This was an overall light read; and it left me wanting more depth and more impact.
Here I did not experience an emotional journey where I could see why and how they're attracted to each other. The locations of NYC and Spain were prominent as were the kitchens of upscale restaurants.
This was an overall light read; and it left me wanting more depth and more impact.
May 14, 2025
Countries of Origin
follows young, Spanish-born Demetrio as he returns to a homeland he barely remembers in order to pursue a life that has yet to take shape. On a somewhat involuntary flight from New York to Madrid, he finds himself seated next to the magnetic Jacobo, whose beauty and wealth prove to be the ultimate lure.
Despite the seductive premise, the novel subverts any true notion of passion or desire. The men’s meeting doesn’t take place for many chapters, allowing Demetrio’s anxieties and disillusions to overpower a life devoid of much ambiance. Even then, their familiarity is more charged than gratifying; a coquettish period that stretches into oblivion.
The dialogue is, likewise, fairly instrumental, aiming to recap main events rather than illuminate the subliminal forces behind them. And yet, where the novel’s language fails to stir a response, the plot itself operates in extremes. The highs and lows that Deme reaches prove intriguing, but remain unsupported by the plot’s sluggish emotional progression.
However, what this achieves is a sense of disorientation. Though stranded wherever he goes, Demetrio pays heed to the remotest of details, achieving a state of absolute distraction. Peripheral thoughts begin to invade every conversation, and senses appear in constant overdrive.
Unfortunately, none of this is executed convincingly. The narrative is often saturated with talk of the desserts Demetrio concocts as a pastry chef. The rest of the time, we’re treated to a guided — yet painfully vague — tour of a polarized city. But where this external vibrancy should be met with a richness of psychological intrigue, we’re left with fleeting whims.
Jacobo’s actions, which may include entertaining the fancies of older men, are meant to mystify, then dissipate from our memory. Nothing is ever truly revealed about him; no part of him is corporeal enough to justify the sudden force of Demetrio’s feelings.
Despite the seductive premise, the novel subverts any true notion of passion or desire. The men’s meeting doesn’t take place for many chapters, allowing Demetrio’s anxieties and disillusions to overpower a life devoid of much ambiance. Even then, their familiarity is more charged than gratifying; a coquettish period that stretches into oblivion.
The dialogue is, likewise, fairly instrumental, aiming to recap main events rather than illuminate the subliminal forces behind them. And yet, where the novel’s language fails to stir a response, the plot itself operates in extremes. The highs and lows that Deme reaches prove intriguing, but remain unsupported by the plot’s sluggish emotional progression.
However, what this achieves is a sense of disorientation. Though stranded wherever he goes, Demetrio pays heed to the remotest of details, achieving a state of absolute distraction. Peripheral thoughts begin to invade every conversation, and senses appear in constant overdrive.
Unfortunately, none of this is executed convincingly. The narrative is often saturated with talk of the desserts Demetrio concocts as a pastry chef. The rest of the time, we’re treated to a guided — yet painfully vague — tour of a polarized city. But where this external vibrancy should be met with a richness of psychological intrigue, we’re left with fleeting whims.
Jacobo’s actions, which may include entertaining the fancies of older men, are meant to mystify, then dissipate from our memory. Nothing is ever truly revealed about him; no part of him is corporeal enough to justify the sudden force of Demetrio’s feelings.
October 22, 2023
RICHLY TEXTURED BUT INCOMPLETE
This is not your typical m/m romance novel. Fuentes feels no compulsion to titillate us with lurid descriptions of explicit sex. His writing is on a higher plane, yet he does capture the romance that simmers, then boils, between his two main characters. There are many layers to this story. It is far more complex that it appears when you begin reading it. Fuentes has us grapple with conflicts in culture, socio-economic class, sexual orientation, and politics.
It is told in the first person by a young man who is brought from Spain to New York as a boy and raised by his uncle. He's an over-achiever and as a result of his hard work, is about to receive the promotion of his dreams: head pastry chef of a Michelin starred restaurant. The problem is, he's undocumented, so that can't happen. He makes the hard choice to return to Spain, spend ten years there which is the law to legally immigrate and make himself legitimate. On the flight over, he meets an uber rich young Spaniard who becomes his romantic interest in the story.
Fuentes spends the length of the book creating a complex story, getting us invested in its outcome and then chooses, in my view anyway, to create a convenient resolution to wrap things up. The ending appears rather fanciful, seems way too convenient, abrupt, and ultimately unsatisfying. I wanted more. Reading the novel, I expected it to go places Fuentes chooses not to take us.
This is not your typical m/m romance novel. Fuentes feels no compulsion to titillate us with lurid descriptions of explicit sex. His writing is on a higher plane, yet he does capture the romance that simmers, then boils, between his two main characters. There are many layers to this story. It is far more complex that it appears when you begin reading it. Fuentes has us grapple with conflicts in culture, socio-economic class, sexual orientation, and politics.
It is told in the first person by a young man who is brought from Spain to New York as a boy and raised by his uncle. He's an over-achiever and as a result of his hard work, is about to receive the promotion of his dreams: head pastry chef of a Michelin starred restaurant. The problem is, he's undocumented, so that can't happen. He makes the hard choice to return to Spain, spend ten years there which is the law to legally immigrate and make himself legitimate. On the flight over, he meets an uber rich young Spaniard who becomes his romantic interest in the story.
Fuentes spends the length of the book creating a complex story, getting us invested in its outcome and then chooses, in my view anyway, to create a convenient resolution to wrap things up. The ending appears rather fanciful, seems way too convenient, abrupt, and ultimately unsatisfying. I wanted more. Reading the novel, I expected it to go places Fuentes chooses not to take us.
July 22, 2023
3.5 stars
I hate to use the "too much telling, not enough showing" cliché, but... *shrug*.
The premise of this novel is very compelling but I had major issues with the execution. Too often, the prose was clunky and the dialogue didn't feel realistic. There were also major inconsistencies from sentence to sentence, sometimes within the same paragraph. I kind of felt like I was experiencing mental whiplash at times.
I also didn't think there was any real emotional payoff—partially because the ending felt so rushed. It very much felt like a forced happy ending. And Fuentes left way too many key scenes off the page for my liking; we'd arrive at a certain emotional point with the characters and not know how or why they got there.
It's kind of a shame that the character work was so shoddy, because I enjoyed most of the prose about the settings and the food especially.
Anyway, this is my bad for getting lured in by the Andrew Sean Greer blurb that said "It's a great book. It's the book to read right now." It really was not that urgent :P.
I hate to use the "too much telling, not enough showing" cliché, but... *shrug*.
The premise of this novel is very compelling but I had major issues with the execution. Too often, the prose was clunky and the dialogue didn't feel realistic. There were also major inconsistencies from sentence to sentence, sometimes within the same paragraph. I kind of felt like I was experiencing mental whiplash at times.
I also didn't think there was any real emotional payoff—partially because the ending felt so rushed. It very much felt like a forced happy ending. And Fuentes left way too many key scenes off the page for my liking; we'd arrive at a certain emotional point with the characters and not know how or why they got there.
It's kind of a shame that the character work was so shoddy, because I enjoyed most of the prose about the settings and the food especially.
Anyway, this is my bad for getting lured in by the Andrew Sean Greer blurb that said "It's a great book. It's the book to read right now." It really was not that urgent :P.
June 23, 2023
Narration & Story: 4.5 Stars
RTC
RTC
October 25, 2025
"You lose - and this has to be experienced to be understood - you lose something of your upright bearing if you no longer have the soil of your own land beneath your feet; you feel less confident, more distrustful of yourself." (Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday)
First impression: Javier Fuentes wrote his book like he would a recipe, haphazardly scribbling words on paper with the hope that you will do the rest, providing you feel up to trying your hand at it. That's for form.
What about substance? Well, the story lists off all the possible clichés of the genre. It is also rather overloaded with coincidences - like all of a sudden you think of a friend you haven't seen for two years, and hey, presto! The dude materialises in the John as if by magic.
Yet, turn a blind eye to such blatant flaws (no easy feat while reading, ha, ha!) - blatant flaws indicative of a certain amount of laziness on the part of the writer (not to say anything about the contempt in which he holds you), and then you can still make the best of a bad job.
Because if Javier Fuentes is no match for Stefan Zweig when it comes to expressing how it feels to be uprooted, none the less he touches on several meaningful themes. For starters, I was anxious to see how Demetrio, the narrator, would grapple with "a homeland that doesn't feel like home" and social differences -his new friend Jacobo definitely belonging to an alien world, so to speak! And a genius of a pastry chef, how could Demetrio even think of jacking it in and leaving his job?
Then in my view, a book like this one contributes significantly to the salutary reminding of how people had proved foolish, when carried away by the excitement of the end of the Cold War and the advent of the Internet, they went enraptured about "the end of history" as Francis Fukuyama put it, whilst Marshall McLuhan's absurd notion of "a global village" was being brought back to life. True enough, Countries of Origin is set a few years after 9/11, but the point still holds, and Fuentes is good at making it.
And if this book and I started off on the wrong foot, past the first four or five chapters, following Demetrio on the busy streets of Madrid, and watching him play it by ear, I shook off my first impression. Once again, Zweig's comments were on my mind: "When I think of the time taken being searched and questioned at border crossing points, only then do I realise how much human dignity has been lost in this century." To which I imagined Demetrio answering that "[he] had accepted that [he] would never be home, because home, if [he] had ever had one, could never be found."
However, above all, he will learn a much bigger lesson in the end: "Life is now."
First impression: Javier Fuentes wrote his book like he would a recipe, haphazardly scribbling words on paper with the hope that you will do the rest, providing you feel up to trying your hand at it. That's for form.
What about substance? Well, the story lists off all the possible clichés of the genre. It is also rather overloaded with coincidences - like all of a sudden you think of a friend you haven't seen for two years, and hey, presto! The dude materialises in the John as if by magic.
Yet, turn a blind eye to such blatant flaws (no easy feat while reading, ha, ha!) - blatant flaws indicative of a certain amount of laziness on the part of the writer (not to say anything about the contempt in which he holds you), and then you can still make the best of a bad job.
Because if Javier Fuentes is no match for Stefan Zweig when it comes to expressing how it feels to be uprooted, none the less he touches on several meaningful themes. For starters, I was anxious to see how Demetrio, the narrator, would grapple with "a homeland that doesn't feel like home" and social differences -his new friend Jacobo definitely belonging to an alien world, so to speak! And a genius of a pastry chef, how could Demetrio even think of jacking it in and leaving his job?
Then in my view, a book like this one contributes significantly to the salutary reminding of how people had proved foolish, when carried away by the excitement of the end of the Cold War and the advent of the Internet, they went enraptured about "the end of history" as Francis Fukuyama put it, whilst Marshall McLuhan's absurd notion of "a global village" was being brought back to life. True enough, Countries of Origin is set a few years after 9/11, but the point still holds, and Fuentes is good at making it.
And if this book and I started off on the wrong foot, past the first four or five chapters, following Demetrio on the busy streets of Madrid, and watching him play it by ear, I shook off my first impression. Once again, Zweig's comments were on my mind: "When I think of the time taken being searched and questioned at border crossing points, only then do I realise how much human dignity has been lost in this century." To which I imagined Demetrio answering that "[he] had accepted that [he] would never be home, because home, if [he] had ever had one, could never be found."
However, above all, he will learn a much bigger lesson in the end: "Life is now."
January 30, 2024
"Países de origen" me ha dejado sentimientos encontrados. Es una historia tierna y bastante cruda que tiene como eje principal el amor, la inmigración, el empezar de cero y la impredecibilidad de la vida. Sin embargo, toda esa verosimilitud se pierde en varios puntos de la trama. La relación entre Demetrio y Jacobo, dos personas de realidades completamente diferentes, se siente muy forzada en ocariones (si bien es una historia emotiva y tiene un buen desarrollo). Lo mismo pasa con todos los eventos de las últimas 30 páginas, que ocurren de manera muy precipitada y poco realista. Aún así, es una novela corta que te recordará lo verdaderamente importante en la vida y te hará valorar el aquí y el ahora. En definitiva, un buen comienzo para Javier Fuentes.
June 10, 2023
Its 2007 and twenty four year old pastry chef Demetrio has been living in Manhattan as an undocumented immigrant.
“I had become an adult in a twenty-six-by-fourteen foot kitchen among aggressive, type A chefs and cooks who yelled the first chance they got. While my friends spent their teenage years skating on the streets of the lower east Side, I learned to surf the heat waves radiating from convection ovens.”
Raised by his Uncle Chus, and mentored by his boss/chef he is presented with an opportunity to move up in the culinary world. But when the possibility of his immigration status could be revealed, he is left with the sobering decision to go back to Madrid, before getting deported. On the flight back to his homeland he is seated next to Jacobo, a handsome young man also from Spain, who is returning home for the summer after being in school at NYU. What starts as a chance meeting begins to grow into a lesson in chemistry as the two men circle each other with a palpable attraction that stutters forward like an impromptu tango, an undefined relationship beginning to germinate.
I read almost this entire book in one afternoon becoming so enamored with these characters wrestling with sexuality, class distinctions, and their increasing and complex attraction to each other. Fuentes’ prose is everything here and this is where the sensual comes in, from the food so lovingly prepared by Deme, to his visual feast of the streets and bars of Madrid, (I could feel the heat coming off the pavement on the page)
I was here for all of it.
The book left me with the same kind of romantic melancholy of both #CallMeByYourName and the Richard Linklater film #BeforeSunset
This is the perfect book not only for #Pride but also for summer.
Best enjoyed with a chilled bottle of wine and the most decadent chocolate you can find. Thanks to @pantheonbooks and @netgalley for the advance copy.
“I had become an adult in a twenty-six-by-fourteen foot kitchen among aggressive, type A chefs and cooks who yelled the first chance they got. While my friends spent their teenage years skating on the streets of the lower east Side, I learned to surf the heat waves radiating from convection ovens.”
Raised by his Uncle Chus, and mentored by his boss/chef he is presented with an opportunity to move up in the culinary world. But when the possibility of his immigration status could be revealed, he is left with the sobering decision to go back to Madrid, before getting deported. On the flight back to his homeland he is seated next to Jacobo, a handsome young man also from Spain, who is returning home for the summer after being in school at NYU. What starts as a chance meeting begins to grow into a lesson in chemistry as the two men circle each other with a palpable attraction that stutters forward like an impromptu tango, an undefined relationship beginning to germinate.
I read almost this entire book in one afternoon becoming so enamored with these characters wrestling with sexuality, class distinctions, and their increasing and complex attraction to each other. Fuentes’ prose is everything here and this is where the sensual comes in, from the food so lovingly prepared by Deme, to his visual feast of the streets and bars of Madrid, (I could feel the heat coming off the pavement on the page)
I was here for all of it.
The book left me with the same kind of romantic melancholy of both #CallMeByYourName and the Richard Linklater film #BeforeSunset
This is the perfect book not only for #Pride but also for summer.
Best enjoyed with a chilled bottle of wine and the most decadent chocolate you can find. Thanks to @pantheonbooks and @netgalley for the advance copy.
December 24, 2025
I would hardly call this a “stunning” debut. I liked the premise—two men meeting and falling in love under unlikely circumstances. But that’s about the only thing I enjoyed. Everything about this story seemed forced, in an almost The Devil Wears Prada name-dropping kind of way. Uncomfortable, unbelievable, very little heat of any kind—or actually, misplaced heat. The relationships seemed weak and cliched. And the dialogue? Utterly ridiculous.
Like other readers, I enjoyed the descriptions of Madrid. But very very little else. Even the names were weird. Nothing seemed to mesh with anything else.
Like other readers, I enjoyed the descriptions of Madrid. But very very little else. Even the names were weird. Nothing seemed to mesh with anything else.
February 10, 2024
Me parece increíble que en menos de 100 páginas esta historia me haya hecho sentir tantas cosas. Tocó fibras sensibles y también me dió las palabras que necesitaba desde hace años.
Un gran debut¡! Espero leer más de Javier en el futuro
Un gran debut¡! Espero leer más de Javier en el futuro
June 17, 2024
Lo que más disfruté es la forma detallada del autor de escribir sobre la ciudad, el arte y la gastronomía. Por lo demás, me faltó algo. Igual la disfruté.
October 25, 2025
There is a particular kind of book where “plot” is the wrong word. Not because nothing happens, but because what happens is the body itself — what it does under pressure, what it wants when it shouldn’t want, how it holds memory like a second bloodstream. *Countries of Origin* is one of those books. What carries you forward here is not just whether a young undocumented pastry chef in New York will manage not to get caught and removed. What carries you is the way he inhales before he answers a question at customs. It’s the way his stomach flips when the rich boy across the plane aisle asks if he’s okay. It’s the way a glass of water tastes on his tongue when he’s too panicked to admit he hasn’t slept in two days. The novel runs on that level of closeness. It’s skin-close, breath-close, pulse-close.
The book follows Demetrio — Deme, sometimes — a pastry chef in his early twenties who has basically built his entire identity around two things: work and control. He works in a high-pressure, high-prestige Manhattan kitchen where perfection is not admired so much as expected, and he is good at it, in the way that comes from obsession and a willingness to hurt for it. His life is set in the nighttime economy of restaurants: burns that never quite heal, hands that smell like caramelized sugar and bleach, sleep that comes like a collapse instead of a choice. There’s a strange holiness to that world. You belong there if you can take the heat, if you can plate beauty even when your feet are screaming and your head is full of low-grade panic. For years, that belonging has been enough.
But there is a second fact running under all of that, and it is the fact that rules his life: Demetrio is undocumented in the United States.
The book never treats that as an “issue,” never frames it as a headline. It’s not that kind of story. Instead, it shows you the absolute, practical, stomach-tightening reality of what that means when you are 24 and almost, almost about to be offered the thing you’ve worked your whole childhood for. He’s about to be elevated — officially, publicly — into a pastry chef role that would put his name on something that matters. He has been doing the work for years already, quietly, invisibly, and now he might be able to do it with actual credit. The restaurant wants him. The chefs respect him. The diners will taste him.
And he cannot take it.
Not because of talent. Not because he’s not ready. Because HR needs a Social Security number. Because payroll needs to know who you “are” in the way the state defines “are.” Because every scrap of legitimacy in that world is also a point of exposure. The book forces you to sit in the ache of that: to be excellent, but structurally barred from being seen as excellent in any way that doesn’t also risk annihilation. It’s a kind of professional claustrophobia. You’re in the room, your hand is the one doing the finishing dust of citrus sugar, your custard is what made the critic gasp, and still, publicly, you’re nobody. And you’re supposed to be grateful for the chance to maybe continue to be nobody.
That’s the pressure cooker he’s in when we meet him. And it breaks him open.
Faced with the very real possibility that staying in New York means getting caught and processed and erased, Demetrio does something that in most American narratives would be backwards. He leaves. He does not run toward the dream of America. He runs away from it. He gets on a plane to Spain, the country stamped on his passport but not, in any deep way, the country of his lived self. He hasn’t been “home,” not really, since he was a child. His Spanish is still his mother’s Spanish, his uncle’s Spanish, carrying old shapes in the vowels. He doesn’t know where he will sleep when he lands. He’s feverish, scared, and alone.
And then the boy in the next seat talks to him.
The romance in this book is not a side plot; it’s one of the book’s cores. But calling it “romance,” without qualifiers, feels too neat. What happens between Demetrio and Jacobo is more volatile than that, less polite. They meet on the flight and there’s an instant attraction, but the more interesting thing is recognition. Jacobo sees Demetrio in a way Demetrio is not used to being seen — not as the ghost in the kitchen that makes miracles in sugar, not as the undocumented body that has to keep its head down and its paperwork invisible, but as someone worth watching, worth worrying about, worth wanting. It’s radical attention, and it hits Demetrio like oxygen.
Jacobo, on first glance, is the textbook dangerous boy: rich, careless, good-looking in a way that makes people bend toward him without thinking. He’s headed back to Madrid from New York, where he studies, and he knows how to wield charm like it’s a lighter. We learn fast that the ease is only partly real. Underneath there are pills, a rehab history, pressure from a family that is both powerful and rotting, a long training in how to make pain look like posture. But early on, what matters is that he can move through the world with the kind of inherited assurance that opens doors before he even reaches them. He has money. He has an address. He has a last name that makes strangers helpful. He has, in other words, the opposite problem from Demetrio: he is allowed to exist.
That difference is not just backdrop. It’s the live wire of the book.
When they land in Madrid and Demetrio nearly goes under — sick from the flight, barely able to breathe, running on adrenaline and fear — Jacobo doesn’t disappear into a taxi and a clean apartment and leave him to fend for himself. He takes him along. He folds him, fast, into his world: a family apartment in an old-money neighborhood, a mother who knows how to pour sherry without spilling a drop, a little sister with a too-quick mouth and glitter barrettes, a housekeeper who has been with the family for decades and navigates class and affection with the kind of practiced grace you only develop when you’ve seen generations of one lineage cycle through the same rooms. For a minute, Demetrio is held.
But the book is honest about what that holding costs.
It feels good — of course it does. After years of scarcity and hypervigilance, it is almost narcotic to be fed, to be watched over, to be told to sleep. To be given a room and keys and air-conditioning and permission. Yet every gesture comes stamped with class. There is a family portrait on the wall of Jacobo’s grandfather in uniform, the kind of uniform that carries with it a very specific, very bloody kind of Spanish history, and Demetrio sees it. There is old wealth in the hallways, not new money but the kind that thinks of itself as synonymous with the nation. There is a way Jacobo talks to drivers and doormen and domestic staff that is warm, almost fond, and still carries that little note — I am the person being served and you are the person serving. Demetrio hears that note, too, and flinches.
The brilliance of the book is that it refuses to sentimentalize any of this. Being protected by somebody else’s power is not free. Desire is not clean. Wanting someone is not the same as trusting the world that made him. Demetrio keeps both truths alive at once: I want you, and I hate that I need you.
That duality plays out again and again. When Jacobo pays a landlord in cash to lock down an apartment for Demetrio in a crowded, immigrant-heavy neighborhood. When Jacobo takes Demetrio south in his grandfather’s Mercedes, toward heat and sea and a kind of stolen honeymoon. When they sleep zipped into the same borrowed sleeping bag on a beach that feels outside time, and in the morning Demetrio wakes up and catalogs Jacobo’s bruises and asks himself, terrified, if he crossed a line he can’t uncross. When Demetrio touches Jacobo in public, in a museum, in front of a painting that stands in for national trauma, and you can feel the power in that defiance — two men claiming each other in open air — and you can also feel the surveillance in it. Who’s looking. Who’s going to tell.
For all the heat between them, this isn’t just a lovers-on-a-summer-trip book. In its best passages, it’s a book about belonging, and what belonging costs when you’ve never actually had it. Demetrio keeps trying to locate a version of “home” that doesn’t dissolve under him. New York fed him and held him and made him, but also treated him like contraband. Spain is technically his birth country, but his Spanish is marked, his memories are borrowed from other people’s stories, and the police here have their own way of narrowing their eyes at you on the street. Jacobo feels like a kind of home, or at least like warmth and steadiness, and then Jacobo vanishes into his grief, his family, his pills, his silence. The book keeps asking: where do you stand when every place is temporary, every attachment conditional, every room someone else’s room?
The answer it edges toward is not a slogan. It’s land.
Late in the book, after illness and family implosion and a vigil in a hospital room that feels like the inside of a throat, a door opens that you don’t expect in a story like this. Demetrio is given access to a piece of land in the south of Spain. It’s not a slick apartment in Madrid. It’s not a visa. It’s not a job offer. It’s a sprawled, sun-cracked coastal property: a low white house with peeling paint and an old brick oven in the courtyard, rows of citrus trees, dry grass whispering in the afternoon heat, the sea close enough that salt sits on your lips just standing there. It’s quiet in a way cities can’t be. It’s unobserved in a way he has never been. It is, for a stretch of pages, his.
The writing in this section slows down and breathes. You can feel the book pulling the camera back. Demetrio walks the property and thinks, not in fantasy terms (“I’ll be a famous chef, I’ll get profiled, I’ll prove everyone wrong”), but in practical, almost domestic ones. Could I make something small here. Sell pastries to people driving through. Sleep without looking over my shoulder. Invite the people I love and feed them something made from trees on this soil. The dream is not glamour. The dream is jurisdiction — to live one day of his life without asking permission from a border, a boss, or a boyfriend.
That’s the quiet revolution of the book. For all the sensuality, for all the tension and the body heat and the slow-burn ache between Demetrio and Jacobo, the most radical wish the novel entertains is not epic romance. It’s self-determination.
There are things the book does with astonishing control. One is sensory detail. Taste, heat, texture, scent — all of it is there, not as decoration but as emotional weather. When Demetrio is afraid, his mouth goes metallic. When he’s aroused, the air itself feels thick. When he’s grieving, food turns chalky. When he’s safe, even briefly, flavors open: marigold ice cream that tastes like bitterness and sun; jamón shaved so thin it’s basically translucent salt on the tongue; tiny fried fish you eat whole, crunch and bone and oil, standing in the dark with someone’s arm touching yours. The book understands appetite, and uses appetite to talk about need. Hunger for food bleeds into hunger for touch bleeds into hunger for a place in the world. It’s all one hunger. That’s smart, and it’s beautiful.
Another strength is the way the novel handles fear. Not dramatic, movie fear. Low, domestic fear. Sleepless fear. The fear of pressing your face to a bus window because a cop just got on and you don’t want to look “nervous,” as if being nervous is an admission of guilt. The fear of letting somebody love you because if they love you, they might feel entitled to you, and if they feel entitled to you, they can decide what happens to you. The fear of walking into a consulate and being told, out loud, in an air-conditioned room, that your entire life in a country you consider yours was never legal and never will be. The book sits in that fear without turning it into spectacle. It treats it like weather. Constant, inescapable, shaping how you carry your shoulders.
The book is also quietly funny in places, and that matters. There are scenes where the two men are teasing each other in a way that feels so specific — joking about a cut-up T-shirt, or exaggeratedly flexing at each other with cheap sunglasses on, or doing bad accents in a hotel room at dawn — that you can feel the actual relief of it. The humor comes like a pressure valve. Without that, the intensity might curdle. With it, the intimacy feels earned.
Where the book is less precise is in pacing consequence. Sometimes something huge happens — an almost catastrophic fight, a frightening act of surveillance, a major rupture — and the fallout resolves faster than you expect for wounds that deep. At times, characters process life-altering events on what feels like a compressed clock, because the narrative needs to move them into the next charged space. The speed doesn’t ruin those turns, but you can feel the compression. You want certain reckonings to sit and bruise for longer.
There are also moments where the ease of access around Jacobo’s money blurs the edges. Need an apartment? Cash appears. Need a car to vanish down the coast overnight? There’s a car, with heritage and status built into the leather seats. Need distance from the city and all its eyes? Off you go. The book does interrogate that privilege, and Demetrio certainly feels the shame of accepting it, but occasionally the logistics smooth too quickly to feel fully lived. It’s a minor fracture in an otherwise deeply felt world.
Even with those quibbles, what lingers after the last page is not the wobble. It’s the ache. It’s Demetrio at a kitchen counter in a strange city, tasting a custard he just pulled off the stove and thinking of his uncle. It’s the way Jacobo rests his head in Demetrio’s lap on a balcony after midnight, both of them too tired to pretend not to need the contact. It’s a little girl licking sugar off a lollipop in a hospital hallway because grief is too big for her to name. It’s a field in the south of Spain at dusk, buzzing with insects and possibility, and a young man standing there in borrowed clothes, trying to imagine a life where his body doesn’t have to apologize for existing.
The book understands intimacy as labor. It understands class as choreography. It understands queerness not just as desire but as a way of building provisional family in the wreckage of what the official world refuses to hold. It understands love as both sanctuary and threat. Most importantly, it understands that the longing to belong somewhere is not sentimental. It’s practical. You need a place to sleep. You need a set of keys that are yours. You need to know you can call someone if you’re scared and that they will come, not because they pity you, not because they want to collect you like a souvenir, but because you are theirs and they are yours.
That’s what’s at stake here.
This is a book about borders, yes. It’s about papers, and customs, and men with submachine guns standing outside consulates deciding with their eyes who gets to cross a line. It’s about class and passports and state violence and all the quiet humiliations of being “illegal” in the place you consider home. But it’s also, insistently, a book about tenderness. About cooking for someone you love. About the weight of a sleeping body against your shoulder on public transit. About the way grief can turn a proud, sharp-tongued mother into someone who will still, even in her own dying, look at the boy her son brought home and tell him that a life is something you are allowed to choose, not just something that happens to you.
I finished this novel with the sense that I had been trusted with something private. Not just a story, but a way of looking. The way the pages sit with exhaustion without romanticizing it. The way they let lust and shame sit in the same breath. The way they refuse to tidy up power imbalances just to make you feel better. The way they give a working-class, undocumented queer protagonist the right to want not just survival, not just sex, not just safety, but actual pleasure — beauty, rest, sweetness, ownership, future.
That wanting feels radical on the page. It also feels earned.
My rating: 92 out of 100.
The book follows Demetrio — Deme, sometimes — a pastry chef in his early twenties who has basically built his entire identity around two things: work and control. He works in a high-pressure, high-prestige Manhattan kitchen where perfection is not admired so much as expected, and he is good at it, in the way that comes from obsession and a willingness to hurt for it. His life is set in the nighttime economy of restaurants: burns that never quite heal, hands that smell like caramelized sugar and bleach, sleep that comes like a collapse instead of a choice. There’s a strange holiness to that world. You belong there if you can take the heat, if you can plate beauty even when your feet are screaming and your head is full of low-grade panic. For years, that belonging has been enough.
But there is a second fact running under all of that, and it is the fact that rules his life: Demetrio is undocumented in the United States.
The book never treats that as an “issue,” never frames it as a headline. It’s not that kind of story. Instead, it shows you the absolute, practical, stomach-tightening reality of what that means when you are 24 and almost, almost about to be offered the thing you’ve worked your whole childhood for. He’s about to be elevated — officially, publicly — into a pastry chef role that would put his name on something that matters. He has been doing the work for years already, quietly, invisibly, and now he might be able to do it with actual credit. The restaurant wants him. The chefs respect him. The diners will taste him.
And he cannot take it.
Not because of talent. Not because he’s not ready. Because HR needs a Social Security number. Because payroll needs to know who you “are” in the way the state defines “are.” Because every scrap of legitimacy in that world is also a point of exposure. The book forces you to sit in the ache of that: to be excellent, but structurally barred from being seen as excellent in any way that doesn’t also risk annihilation. It’s a kind of professional claustrophobia. You’re in the room, your hand is the one doing the finishing dust of citrus sugar, your custard is what made the critic gasp, and still, publicly, you’re nobody. And you’re supposed to be grateful for the chance to maybe continue to be nobody.
That’s the pressure cooker he’s in when we meet him. And it breaks him open.
Faced with the very real possibility that staying in New York means getting caught and processed and erased, Demetrio does something that in most American narratives would be backwards. He leaves. He does not run toward the dream of America. He runs away from it. He gets on a plane to Spain, the country stamped on his passport but not, in any deep way, the country of his lived self. He hasn’t been “home,” not really, since he was a child. His Spanish is still his mother’s Spanish, his uncle’s Spanish, carrying old shapes in the vowels. He doesn’t know where he will sleep when he lands. He’s feverish, scared, and alone.
And then the boy in the next seat talks to him.
The romance in this book is not a side plot; it’s one of the book’s cores. But calling it “romance,” without qualifiers, feels too neat. What happens between Demetrio and Jacobo is more volatile than that, less polite. They meet on the flight and there’s an instant attraction, but the more interesting thing is recognition. Jacobo sees Demetrio in a way Demetrio is not used to being seen — not as the ghost in the kitchen that makes miracles in sugar, not as the undocumented body that has to keep its head down and its paperwork invisible, but as someone worth watching, worth worrying about, worth wanting. It’s radical attention, and it hits Demetrio like oxygen.
Jacobo, on first glance, is the textbook dangerous boy: rich, careless, good-looking in a way that makes people bend toward him without thinking. He’s headed back to Madrid from New York, where he studies, and he knows how to wield charm like it’s a lighter. We learn fast that the ease is only partly real. Underneath there are pills, a rehab history, pressure from a family that is both powerful and rotting, a long training in how to make pain look like posture. But early on, what matters is that he can move through the world with the kind of inherited assurance that opens doors before he even reaches them. He has money. He has an address. He has a last name that makes strangers helpful. He has, in other words, the opposite problem from Demetrio: he is allowed to exist.
That difference is not just backdrop. It’s the live wire of the book.
When they land in Madrid and Demetrio nearly goes under — sick from the flight, barely able to breathe, running on adrenaline and fear — Jacobo doesn’t disappear into a taxi and a clean apartment and leave him to fend for himself. He takes him along. He folds him, fast, into his world: a family apartment in an old-money neighborhood, a mother who knows how to pour sherry without spilling a drop, a little sister with a too-quick mouth and glitter barrettes, a housekeeper who has been with the family for decades and navigates class and affection with the kind of practiced grace you only develop when you’ve seen generations of one lineage cycle through the same rooms. For a minute, Demetrio is held.
But the book is honest about what that holding costs.
It feels good — of course it does. After years of scarcity and hypervigilance, it is almost narcotic to be fed, to be watched over, to be told to sleep. To be given a room and keys and air-conditioning and permission. Yet every gesture comes stamped with class. There is a family portrait on the wall of Jacobo’s grandfather in uniform, the kind of uniform that carries with it a very specific, very bloody kind of Spanish history, and Demetrio sees it. There is old wealth in the hallways, not new money but the kind that thinks of itself as synonymous with the nation. There is a way Jacobo talks to drivers and doormen and domestic staff that is warm, almost fond, and still carries that little note — I am the person being served and you are the person serving. Demetrio hears that note, too, and flinches.
The brilliance of the book is that it refuses to sentimentalize any of this. Being protected by somebody else’s power is not free. Desire is not clean. Wanting someone is not the same as trusting the world that made him. Demetrio keeps both truths alive at once: I want you, and I hate that I need you.
That duality plays out again and again. When Jacobo pays a landlord in cash to lock down an apartment for Demetrio in a crowded, immigrant-heavy neighborhood. When Jacobo takes Demetrio south in his grandfather’s Mercedes, toward heat and sea and a kind of stolen honeymoon. When they sleep zipped into the same borrowed sleeping bag on a beach that feels outside time, and in the morning Demetrio wakes up and catalogs Jacobo’s bruises and asks himself, terrified, if he crossed a line he can’t uncross. When Demetrio touches Jacobo in public, in a museum, in front of a painting that stands in for national trauma, and you can feel the power in that defiance — two men claiming each other in open air — and you can also feel the surveillance in it. Who’s looking. Who’s going to tell.
For all the heat between them, this isn’t just a lovers-on-a-summer-trip book. In its best passages, it’s a book about belonging, and what belonging costs when you’ve never actually had it. Demetrio keeps trying to locate a version of “home” that doesn’t dissolve under him. New York fed him and held him and made him, but also treated him like contraband. Spain is technically his birth country, but his Spanish is marked, his memories are borrowed from other people’s stories, and the police here have their own way of narrowing their eyes at you on the street. Jacobo feels like a kind of home, or at least like warmth and steadiness, and then Jacobo vanishes into his grief, his family, his pills, his silence. The book keeps asking: where do you stand when every place is temporary, every attachment conditional, every room someone else’s room?
The answer it edges toward is not a slogan. It’s land.
Late in the book, after illness and family implosion and a vigil in a hospital room that feels like the inside of a throat, a door opens that you don’t expect in a story like this. Demetrio is given access to a piece of land in the south of Spain. It’s not a slick apartment in Madrid. It’s not a visa. It’s not a job offer. It’s a sprawled, sun-cracked coastal property: a low white house with peeling paint and an old brick oven in the courtyard, rows of citrus trees, dry grass whispering in the afternoon heat, the sea close enough that salt sits on your lips just standing there. It’s quiet in a way cities can’t be. It’s unobserved in a way he has never been. It is, for a stretch of pages, his.
The writing in this section slows down and breathes. You can feel the book pulling the camera back. Demetrio walks the property and thinks, not in fantasy terms (“I’ll be a famous chef, I’ll get profiled, I’ll prove everyone wrong”), but in practical, almost domestic ones. Could I make something small here. Sell pastries to people driving through. Sleep without looking over my shoulder. Invite the people I love and feed them something made from trees on this soil. The dream is not glamour. The dream is jurisdiction — to live one day of his life without asking permission from a border, a boss, or a boyfriend.
That’s the quiet revolution of the book. For all the sensuality, for all the tension and the body heat and the slow-burn ache between Demetrio and Jacobo, the most radical wish the novel entertains is not epic romance. It’s self-determination.
There are things the book does with astonishing control. One is sensory detail. Taste, heat, texture, scent — all of it is there, not as decoration but as emotional weather. When Demetrio is afraid, his mouth goes metallic. When he’s aroused, the air itself feels thick. When he’s grieving, food turns chalky. When he’s safe, even briefly, flavors open: marigold ice cream that tastes like bitterness and sun; jamón shaved so thin it’s basically translucent salt on the tongue; tiny fried fish you eat whole, crunch and bone and oil, standing in the dark with someone’s arm touching yours. The book understands appetite, and uses appetite to talk about need. Hunger for food bleeds into hunger for touch bleeds into hunger for a place in the world. It’s all one hunger. That’s smart, and it’s beautiful.
Another strength is the way the novel handles fear. Not dramatic, movie fear. Low, domestic fear. Sleepless fear. The fear of pressing your face to a bus window because a cop just got on and you don’t want to look “nervous,” as if being nervous is an admission of guilt. The fear of letting somebody love you because if they love you, they might feel entitled to you, and if they feel entitled to you, they can decide what happens to you. The fear of walking into a consulate and being told, out loud, in an air-conditioned room, that your entire life in a country you consider yours was never legal and never will be. The book sits in that fear without turning it into spectacle. It treats it like weather. Constant, inescapable, shaping how you carry your shoulders.
The book is also quietly funny in places, and that matters. There are scenes where the two men are teasing each other in a way that feels so specific — joking about a cut-up T-shirt, or exaggeratedly flexing at each other with cheap sunglasses on, or doing bad accents in a hotel room at dawn — that you can feel the actual relief of it. The humor comes like a pressure valve. Without that, the intensity might curdle. With it, the intimacy feels earned.
Where the book is less precise is in pacing consequence. Sometimes something huge happens — an almost catastrophic fight, a frightening act of surveillance, a major rupture — and the fallout resolves faster than you expect for wounds that deep. At times, characters process life-altering events on what feels like a compressed clock, because the narrative needs to move them into the next charged space. The speed doesn’t ruin those turns, but you can feel the compression. You want certain reckonings to sit and bruise for longer.
There are also moments where the ease of access around Jacobo’s money blurs the edges. Need an apartment? Cash appears. Need a car to vanish down the coast overnight? There’s a car, with heritage and status built into the leather seats. Need distance from the city and all its eyes? Off you go. The book does interrogate that privilege, and Demetrio certainly feels the shame of accepting it, but occasionally the logistics smooth too quickly to feel fully lived. It’s a minor fracture in an otherwise deeply felt world.
Even with those quibbles, what lingers after the last page is not the wobble. It’s the ache. It’s Demetrio at a kitchen counter in a strange city, tasting a custard he just pulled off the stove and thinking of his uncle. It’s the way Jacobo rests his head in Demetrio’s lap on a balcony after midnight, both of them too tired to pretend not to need the contact. It’s a little girl licking sugar off a lollipop in a hospital hallway because grief is too big for her to name. It’s a field in the south of Spain at dusk, buzzing with insects and possibility, and a young man standing there in borrowed clothes, trying to imagine a life where his body doesn’t have to apologize for existing.
The book understands intimacy as labor. It understands class as choreography. It understands queerness not just as desire but as a way of building provisional family in the wreckage of what the official world refuses to hold. It understands love as both sanctuary and threat. Most importantly, it understands that the longing to belong somewhere is not sentimental. It’s practical. You need a place to sleep. You need a set of keys that are yours. You need to know you can call someone if you’re scared and that they will come, not because they pity you, not because they want to collect you like a souvenir, but because you are theirs and they are yours.
That’s what’s at stake here.
This is a book about borders, yes. It’s about papers, and customs, and men with submachine guns standing outside consulates deciding with their eyes who gets to cross a line. It’s about class and passports and state violence and all the quiet humiliations of being “illegal” in the place you consider home. But it’s also, insistently, a book about tenderness. About cooking for someone you love. About the weight of a sleeping body against your shoulder on public transit. About the way grief can turn a proud, sharp-tongued mother into someone who will still, even in her own dying, look at the boy her son brought home and tell him that a life is something you are allowed to choose, not just something that happens to you.
I finished this novel with the sense that I had been trusted with something private. Not just a story, but a way of looking. The way the pages sit with exhaustion without romanticizing it. The way they let lust and shame sit in the same breath. The way they refuse to tidy up power imbalances just to make you feel better. The way they give a working-class, undocumented queer protagonist the right to want not just survival, not just sex, not just safety, but actual pleasure — beauty, rest, sweetness, ownership, future.
That wanting feels radical on the page. It also feels earned.
My rating: 92 out of 100.
March 12, 2023
A seductive and atmospheric story about a Spanish pastry chef forced to return to his country of origin. I particularly loved how this is a different take on the immigrant novel as it is a story of someone leaving the US after being here most of his life and starting anew in his country of birth. The unexpected plot and the beautiful sentences make it a total page turner.
March 22, 2024
Really surprised at the mixed reviews but also understand types of readers who wouldn’t love this book. I love that this book didn’t give me what I want when I wanted it. I’m happy I never could have predicted the end. It read like a messy year in a young adults life ending in a future he never could have imagined. If you want a book that follows “the plot mountain” there are so many sterilized writers that will fulfill that need. This is not one of those books (thankfully).
September 15, 2024
-Disclaimer: I won this book for free through Goodreads giveaways in exchange for an honest review.-
Most boring books of 2024, let's get it.
An illegal immigrant talks about Spanish stuff. Dull descriptions. Telling, not showing. With a sprinkle of gays. Emotional payoff = 0. Anticipation = none. Had to skim so I wouldn't fall into a forever slumber.
Most boring books of 2024, let's get it.
An illegal immigrant talks about Spanish stuff. Dull descriptions. Telling, not showing. With a sprinkle of gays. Emotional payoff = 0. Anticipation = none. Had to skim so I wouldn't fall into a forever slumber.
January 27, 2025
pretty writing, easy read, love the food descriptions. got edged for the entire book though. sorry I wanted the two main characters to fuck :/ also why did deme fall asleep like twice a chapter? felt like a lazy way to move time forward
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