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Catalina
A year in the life of the unforgettable Catalina Ituralde, a wickedly wry and heartbreakingly vulnerable student at an elite college, forced to navigate an opaque past, an uncertain future, tragedies on two continents, and the tantalizing possibilities of love and freedom
When Catalina is admitted to Harvard, it feels like the fulfillment of destiny: a miracle child escapes death in Latin America, moves to Queens to be raised by her undocumented grandparents, and becomes one of the chosen. But nothing is simple for Catalina, least of all her complicated, contradictory, ruthlessly probing mind. Now a senior, she faces graduation to a world with no place for the undocumented. Her sense of doom intensifies her curiosities and desires. She infiltrates the school’s elite subcultures—internships and literary journals, posh parties, and secret societies—which she observes with the eye of an anthropologist and an interloper’s skepticism: She is both fascinated and repulsed.
Craving a great romance, Catalina finds herself drawn to a fellow student, an actual budding anthropologist eager to teach her about the Latin American world she was born into but never knew, even as her life back in Queens begins to unravel. And every day, the clock ticks closer to the abyss of life after graduation. Can she save her family? Can she save herself? What does it mean to be saved?
When Catalina is admitted to Harvard, it feels like the fulfillment of destiny: a miracle child escapes death in Latin America, moves to Queens to be raised by her undocumented grandparents, and becomes one of the chosen. But nothing is simple for Catalina, least of all her complicated, contradictory, ruthlessly probing mind. Now a senior, she faces graduation to a world with no place for the undocumented. Her sense of doom intensifies her curiosities and desires. She infiltrates the school’s elite subcultures—internships and literary journals, posh parties, and secret societies—which she observes with the eye of an anthropologist and an interloper’s skepticism: She is both fascinated and repulsed.
Craving a great romance, Catalina finds herself drawn to a fellow student, an actual budding anthropologist eager to teach her about the Latin American world she was born into but never knew, even as her life back in Queens begins to unravel. And every day, the clock ticks closer to the abyss of life after graduation. Can she save her family? Can she save herself? What does it mean to be saved?
224 pages, Paperback
First published July 23, 2024
888 people are currently reading
49133 people want to read
About the author
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
4 books1,077 followersKarla Cornejo Villavicencio has written about immigration, music, beauty, and mental illness for The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Republic, Glamour, Elle, Vogue, n+1, and The New Inquiry, among others. She lives in New Haven with her partner and their dog.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,823 reviews
December 7, 2024
4.5 stars
read it during my flight home, it was very fun and i loved the writing. i know the jumping around bothered people but honestly idgaf it was good either way to me! i relate to the main character at certain parts. its very interesting how even with different backgrounds, poc can relate to each other. there’s a part where the main character jumps out the car (for reasons) and she’s like “nooo my beautiful face” very real tbh
read it during my flight home, it was very fun and i loved the writing. i know the jumping around bothered people but honestly idgaf it was good either way to me! i relate to the main character at certain parts. its very interesting how even with different backgrounds, poc can relate to each other. there’s a part where the main character jumps out the car (for reasons) and she’s like “nooo my beautiful face” very real tbh
October 28, 2025
How Much Are You Allowed to Dream
Graduate from Harvard and you have it made. The world is your oyster– your future’s so bright you gotta wear shades. You are seen as the cream of the crop, the brightest of the bright.
Catalina Ituralde is in her last year at Harvard. She is not your typical undergraduate, though– there is very little typical about her. She is an orphan from Ecuador, undocumented, and being raised by her undocumented grandparents. Having arrived here at a very young age, she has always felt an outsider, seen as an “other.” Her grades have propelled her into Harvard, but an uncertain future beyond graduation has her overwhelmed at times. From outside it seems she has won life’s lottery; a Cinderella story of a poor immigrant girl who is living the American dream. Inside, she often feels immobilized by the high expectations everyone has set for her.
Catalina does not remain a victim. She understands she is living with the ultra-privileged and refuses to be intimidated. She is attracted to the good-looking Nathaniel Wheeler, the son of a famous film director. She even fantasizes about a life with him, that people will say she found “a good man.” She quickly rejects this trap at their romantic peak. “He fell asleep on top of me. I was too young to have men fall asleep on top of me.” She kisses him and sneaks across to a Denny’s, “desperate to do something I could not take back.”
The sudden threat of the deportation of her grandparents abruptly brings Catalina’s focus beyond campus walls. Even as she makes a stand to save her family, she finds herself being used as a liberal cause, a curiosity. This will not stand.
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio is one of Harvard’s first undocumented graduates. This is her first novel, following the success of her nonfiction “The Undocumented Americans.” There is obviously a lot drawn from her life experiences, but she has succeeded in creating a bold, fearless woman who refuses to be confined by the expectations of others.
Thank you to Random House / One World and NetGalley for providing an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review. #Catalina #NetGalley
Graduate from Harvard and you have it made. The world is your oyster– your future’s so bright you gotta wear shades. You are seen as the cream of the crop, the brightest of the bright.
Catalina Ituralde is in her last year at Harvard. She is not your typical undergraduate, though– there is very little typical about her. She is an orphan from Ecuador, undocumented, and being raised by her undocumented grandparents. Having arrived here at a very young age, she has always felt an outsider, seen as an “other.” Her grades have propelled her into Harvard, but an uncertain future beyond graduation has her overwhelmed at times. From outside it seems she has won life’s lottery; a Cinderella story of a poor immigrant girl who is living the American dream. Inside, she often feels immobilized by the high expectations everyone has set for her.
Catalina does not remain a victim. She understands she is living with the ultra-privileged and refuses to be intimidated. She is attracted to the good-looking Nathaniel Wheeler, the son of a famous film director. She even fantasizes about a life with him, that people will say she found “a good man.” She quickly rejects this trap at their romantic peak. “He fell asleep on top of me. I was too young to have men fall asleep on top of me.” She kisses him and sneaks across to a Denny’s, “desperate to do something I could not take back.”
The sudden threat of the deportation of her grandparents abruptly brings Catalina’s focus beyond campus walls. Even as she makes a stand to save her family, she finds herself being used as a liberal cause, a curiosity. This will not stand.
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio is one of Harvard’s first undocumented graduates. This is her first novel, following the success of her nonfiction “The Undocumented Americans.” There is obviously a lot drawn from her life experiences, but she has succeeded in creating a bold, fearless woman who refuses to be confined by the expectations of others.
Thank you to Random House / One World and NetGalley for providing an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review. #Catalina #NetGalley
January 16, 2024
I would read anything from this writer. She doesn’t disappoint with this striking debut novel.
September 4, 2024
Ugh, I wanted to like this but fifty pages in a and it's one long rambling mess of a girl that I tried to find interesting but I just don't think this will be for me.
September 2, 2024
Whoever advertised it as dark academia - you're on my watchlist.
September 26, 2024
4.5 // This book felt like a kindred spirit to THE IDIOT by Elif Batuman. Both books feature young women during their freshman year at Harvard; both voiced with essayist observations that detail everything in their day to day, from the monumental to the banal.. We hear everything in minutiae: their classes, their essays, what books they’ve read, which authors they worship, what music they like, which boys they crush on, and how out of place they feel in the intimidating setting of the Harvard halls.
Although one reminded me of the other, they’re still apples and oranges. CATALINA had an added weight to the campus story: Catalina (the character) is undocumented. And this factor contributes to her inability to be able to entirely fit in. We learn about how someone in this situation has to always be on their guard; how there’s mistrust and secrecy, and an unwillingness to let someone completely in. Catalina has dreams, hopes, and desires just like any other young woman, but has to tweak and reshape them due to her status.
Themes of displacement, family, ambition, perseverance, immigration, home. The inclusion of Catalina’s grandparents (her guardians) also being undocumented, and how their status is even more precarious than hers gives the story an added urgency.
There’s just something so addictive about the writing style of this book. This constant detailing of the day to day felt rhythmic. It’s just a mishmash of everything Catalina is going through all at once. And in ways I feel like it shouldn’t work, but it did. It kept me turning the pages. I didn’t want to stop. It was trance-like.
Although one reminded me of the other, they’re still apples and oranges. CATALINA had an added weight to the campus story: Catalina (the character) is undocumented. And this factor contributes to her inability to be able to entirely fit in. We learn about how someone in this situation has to always be on their guard; how there’s mistrust and secrecy, and an unwillingness to let someone completely in. Catalina has dreams, hopes, and desires just like any other young woman, but has to tweak and reshape them due to her status.
Themes of displacement, family, ambition, perseverance, immigration, home. The inclusion of Catalina’s grandparents (her guardians) also being undocumented, and how their status is even more precarious than hers gives the story an added urgency.
There’s just something so addictive about the writing style of this book. This constant detailing of the day to day felt rhythmic. It’s just a mishmash of everything Catalina is going through all at once. And in ways I feel like it shouldn’t work, but it did. It kept me turning the pages. I didn’t want to stop. It was trance-like.
April 25, 2025
3 " a year in the life of..." stars !!
.
Thank you to Netgalley, the author and Random House Publishing for an ecopy. This was released July 2024. I am providing an honest review...
This is a year in the life of Catalina...bookended briefly by longer stretches of time...she is a young Ecuadorean woman being raised by her undocumented grandparents in NYC.
Catalina is extremely bright, not in touch with her emotions and trying to make sense of her place in the world while dealing with a myriad of intersectional issues, desires and ambivalences...
The prose is YA easy with flourishes that hint at depth of complexity. The pace is frenetic and the tone is overly clever with attempts at humor. There is plenty of cultural education and hints at what living as undocumented might be like....
My enjoyment was more of a fair experience (2.5) but I will leave on the 3 star shelf for the importance of the content and a valiant attempt to write some contemporary meaningful lit.
.
Thank you to Netgalley, the author and Random House Publishing for an ecopy. This was released July 2024. I am providing an honest review...
This is a year in the life of Catalina...bookended briefly by longer stretches of time...she is a young Ecuadorean woman being raised by her undocumented grandparents in NYC.
Catalina is extremely bright, not in touch with her emotions and trying to make sense of her place in the world while dealing with a myriad of intersectional issues, desires and ambivalences...
The prose is YA easy with flourishes that hint at depth of complexity. The pace is frenetic and the tone is overly clever with attempts at humor. There is plenty of cultural education and hints at what living as undocumented might be like....
My enjoyment was more of a fair experience (2.5) but I will leave on the 3 star shelf for the importance of the content and a valiant attempt to write some contemporary meaningful lit.
May 23, 2024
This is a story about an undocumented immigrant from Ecuador who worked her way to Harvard. She shares her experiences with living there feeling like an outsider and keeping her status from most people. Some important issues were discussed (like femicide, the harrowing experiences of people living undocumented in the US, fetishized love interests) but I overall found this book too hard to follow. The content was interesting but the style was not for me.
It was too stream of consciousness and very chaotic. The lack of transitions left me feeling whiplashed. Was that the intent? It reminded me of talking to someone altered who is just rambling in and out of different stories and I’m just politely nodding my head until I can make my exit.
I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.
It was too stream of consciousness and very chaotic. The lack of transitions left me feeling whiplashed. Was that the intent? It reminded me of talking to someone altered who is just rambling in and out of different stories and I’m just politely nodding my head until I can make my exit.
I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.
January 4, 2025
Made me ask haunting questions to myself at 3 am in the (insomniac) morning, like would I be a Republican if I were a white man in the US and stuff.
February 19, 2024
I don't throw around this phrase lightly, but this was "pure vibes."
It will undoubtedly get compared to The Idiot, even though they are two completely different stories, voices, and ideas. Such a comparison would do this story and the writing justice, though. It is frenetic and scattered in a brilliant a way that I don't think I've seen achieved before.
Circling back to vibes, some of them were insufficient for me, and it was hard to stay motivated to read this thing when I knew it was going to meander at any second. As much as I enjoyed Villavicencio's characterizations (funny and short!) I felt the descriptions of places and events was much less concrete or helpful. Part of the campus novel/bildungsroman's appeal is seeing the world through naive eyes, and this vision seemed incomplete. Catalina is clearly very smart, so why doesn't she have a bit more commentary about things?
On the whole, the vibes were wide-roving and cool. I look forward to reading more of Villavicencio's badass writing!
Huge thanks to NetGalley for the ARC<3
It will undoubtedly get compared to The Idiot, even though they are two completely different stories, voices, and ideas. Such a comparison would do this story and the writing justice, though. It is frenetic and scattered in a brilliant a way that I don't think I've seen achieved before.
Circling back to vibes, some of them were insufficient for me, and it was hard to stay motivated to read this thing when I knew it was going to meander at any second. As much as I enjoyed Villavicencio's characterizations (funny and short!) I felt the descriptions of places and events was much less concrete or helpful. Part of the campus novel/bildungsroman's appeal is seeing the world through naive eyes, and this vision seemed incomplete. Catalina is clearly very smart, so why doesn't she have a bit more commentary about things?
On the whole, the vibes were wide-roving and cool. I look forward to reading more of Villavicencio's badass writing!
Huge thanks to NetGalley for the ARC<3
October 10, 2024
I was pretty underwhelmed with this book. It is not my kind of novel, it is a lot of musings and not a lot of plot. The way the character's musings are presented felt a lot like they could've been an essay but were thinly veiled as fiction. I loved KCV's nonfiction and feel her writing is stronger in that form and that this book was trying to do that in fiction that didn't land for me.
May 14, 2025
The world was my oyster. I had been abandoned, sure. I could do nothing about the fact that I had been abandoned. But I could turn the ship around, make lemonade out of lemons. I could become the most famous abandoned girl in the world. Out of all the abandoned girls in the world, I could be their valedictorian.。。。
villavicencio's the undocumented americans is an incisive instant-favorite of mine, so i was thrilled to read her debut novel. there's not much plot in this reflective piece, but the storytelling is unflinching.
reading about the everyday life of someone who has been undocumented since childhood is an eye-opening experience. there are so many little details that many of us take for granted, and there are so many enormous injustices. it's an important piece from a cultural education standpoint, and it's intense to read during the particular hellscape of 2025, as it takes place in obama-era 2010.
the story is oddly meandering, considering the semester-structured sections. our catalina is traumatized and chaotic, and she goes on some wild tangents! it's frenetic autofiction, but it's also sharp and painful and bright and filled with humorous characterizations. the strongest area, for me, is catalina's conflicted relationships with her grandparents who raised her. critical relationships that will always be wounds.
i really enjoy villavicencio's witty narrative voice, and i'll seek out whatever she publishes next, be it fiction or nonfiction.
September 20, 2025
Latine Heritage Month 2025 #3
I loved this, but I can see why others didn't. Catalina is a lot, but she is young, an undocumented Ecuadorian that is sent to live with her (also) undocumented grandparents in Queens when her parents are killed in a car accident.
While at Harvard, she becomes entrenched in the upper echelons of WASP society, befriending and dating rich white people with complexes. While it's all very first world problems for them, she has it a lot different. She obviously can't work, so it's hard to get the work requirement out of the way for her study.
Things start to pivot when her grandfather's work construction site is raided by ICE. While they are looking for someone else, who they don't find, they decide to retaliate by starting the deportation process for others that are unluckily there.
rep: Ecuadorian, undocumented
tw: classism, racism
📱 Thank you to NetGalley and One World
I loved this, but I can see why others didn't. Catalina is a lot, but she is young, an undocumented Ecuadorian that is sent to live with her (also) undocumented grandparents in Queens when her parents are killed in a car accident.
While at Harvard, she becomes entrenched in the upper echelons of WASP society, befriending and dating rich white people with complexes. While it's all very first world problems for them, she has it a lot different. She obviously can't work, so it's hard to get the work requirement out of the way for her study.
Things start to pivot when her grandfather's work construction site is raided by ICE. While they are looking for someone else, who they don't find, they decide to retaliate by starting the deportation process for others that are unluckily there.
rep: Ecuadorian, undocumented
tw: classism, racism
📱 Thank you to NetGalley and One World
December 9, 2024
anyway I’m sad now
August 28, 2024
no plot not even vibes just 200 pages of nothing happening. I wasn’t a fan of the steam of consciousness writing and this was a waste of time. pretty cover though.
May 14, 2024
Catalina is an undocumented immigrant who came to America from Ecuador as a child to live with her grandparents after her parents were killed in an accident. Her grandparents are also undocumented. Accepted at Harvard, this fictional memoir recounts her experiences there. Pre DACA, a major obstacle for this Ivy League educated young woman is that she will not be able to secure a job upon graduation.
This short book (224 pages) exposes the insecurities, fears, and emotional toll experienced by undocumented individuals and families. It is written mostly as stream of consciousness with quite a bit of fantasizing which for me took away from the importance of the topics explored. This style will not be for everyone; others may find it a vibrant, contemporary read. I did enjoy the references to Latin American history and culture.
Thanks to #netgalley and #randomhouse for the DRC.
This short book (224 pages) exposes the insecurities, fears, and emotional toll experienced by undocumented individuals and families. It is written mostly as stream of consciousness with quite a bit of fantasizing which for me took away from the importance of the topics explored. This style will not be for everyone; others may find it a vibrant, contemporary read. I did enjoy the references to Latin American history and culture.
Thanks to #netgalley and #randomhouse for the DRC.
Read
August 14, 2024FINALLY! A book about an undocumented person that doesn't focus on their status. Catalina's VOICE is UNMATCHED! Full review on TIK TOK.
October 7, 2025
It is a good book, strong and gorgeous writing, a vivid character with a powerful voice. What people like to call "well written" and that is accurate. Tremendous talent here, but I won't be recommending this to anyone I care about.
Buried in all this lush prose is the story of a seriously damaged character. [That's not exactly the problem for me.] Catalina begs for violation because she is always violated. Her undocumented Latine identity in the United States pretty much guarantees that, and then there is Harvard. One of my students went to Harvard (the only one I know of, and that athletic scholarship must have led to something, but I don't know what). That I am a class warrior from way back and went to high school with kids whose parents could afford to send them to ivy league colleges did not particularly haunt me at the time, but I thought about it while reading this book.
I have no real excuse for hating Harvard beyond the obvious that it is a WASPy college that defends itself with money and entitlement and traditional bigotry. (When I got to Catalina's fantasy that began "We had help..." with "help" referring to servants, I sat up taller and thought: "Well, the author went to Harvard, so she would know to use that expression.")
Catalina makes her situation worse because she doesn't know how to be better, and "asking for it" is within her power. Powerless except in witnessing her own destruction, the invited violation and self-destructive ugliness reminded me of being violated in that way and without my consent. So, triggering. [That was my problem.] And then again, I've seen this often enough in my HS students.
Mostly, Catalina's beautiful words are the wandering mind-f--cking imaginings of a smart, but seriously damaged person. You might say that losing her parents as an infant, and then the uncle and aunt sending her from Ecuador to her grandparents in Queens, losing hope as a Dreamer whose dreams are unmet, and so forth, is bound to have that effect. You'd be right. (And close to the author's own life but ratcheted up a few notches.) Okay.
Trauma happens to everyone. There is no escaping sorrow, loss, grief, and damage. Everyone experiences these things to some degree. Everyone. Some of are well-prepared for the death of our parents, but it doesn't mean we don't miss them. As a writer, I can show the murder of a child on page one, but by the end of the story, I want to have figured out how the mother recovers from such a horrific loss. Even though she doesn't get all the way to well again, I want to see how she makes her way back. I am more interested in how we struggle through than in the ways we suffer. It's easy to detail the self-harm and sorrow and death-wishes. Everyone survives some of that. Most of us fight our way through because there really isn't much of an alternative.
That doesn't really happen here. Catalina is still thrashing. [Yeah, that's the real problem for me—buried in all this glorious writing is a good short story that doesn't find the ending it deserves.]
I'll keep an eye out for something from later in her life. The author is very smart... maybe she will swim out of the darkness
Buried in all this lush prose is the story of a seriously damaged character. [That's not exactly the problem for me.] Catalina begs for violation because she is always violated. Her undocumented Latine identity in the United States pretty much guarantees that, and then there is Harvard. One of my students went to Harvard (the only one I know of, and that athletic scholarship must have led to something, but I don't know what). That I am a class warrior from way back and went to high school with kids whose parents could afford to send them to ivy league colleges did not particularly haunt me at the time, but I thought about it while reading this book.
I have no real excuse for hating Harvard beyond the obvious that it is a WASPy college that defends itself with money and entitlement and traditional bigotry. (When I got to Catalina's fantasy that began "We had help..." with "help" referring to servants, I sat up taller and thought: "Well, the author went to Harvard, so she would know to use that expression.")
Catalina makes her situation worse because she doesn't know how to be better, and "asking for it" is within her power. Powerless except in witnessing her own destruction, the invited violation and self-destructive ugliness reminded me of being violated in that way and without my consent. So, triggering. [That was my problem.] And then again, I've seen this often enough in my HS students.
Mostly, Catalina's beautiful words are the wandering mind-f--cking imaginings of a smart, but seriously damaged person. You might say that losing her parents as an infant, and then the uncle and aunt sending her from Ecuador to her grandparents in Queens, losing hope as a Dreamer whose dreams are unmet, and so forth, is bound to have that effect. You'd be right. (And close to the author's own life but ratcheted up a few notches.) Okay.
Trauma happens to everyone. There is no escaping sorrow, loss, grief, and damage. Everyone experiences these things to some degree. Everyone. Some of are well-prepared for the death of our parents, but it doesn't mean we don't miss them. As a writer, I can show the murder of a child on page one, but by the end of the story, I want to have figured out how the mother recovers from such a horrific loss. Even though she doesn't get all the way to well again, I want to see how she makes her way back. I am more interested in how we struggle through than in the ways we suffer. It's easy to detail the self-harm and sorrow and death-wishes. Everyone survives some of that. Most of us fight our way through because there really isn't much of an alternative.
That doesn't really happen here. Catalina is still thrashing. [Yeah, that's the real problem for me—buried in all this glorious writing is a good short story that doesn't find the ending it deserves.]
I'll keep an eye out for something from later in her life. The author is very smart... maybe she will swim out of the darkness
September 11, 2024
I really didn’t care for this book. I never connected with Catalina. I thought it would dig deeper about what it means to be undocumented in this country while chasing the American dream, but she just rambled on so much that I thought of DNFing it several times but since it’s a short read I stuck with it. She didn’t even really connect with her grandparents or the boy she was having sex with. It was very unfulfilling as a reader.
dnf
August 15, 2024I sort of assumed that once the author got through catching us up on the background and circumstances of the MC, the "telling" would give way to "showing" - but 30% of the way through the book we were still deep in "telling" mode and I had zero interest in slogging through any more...
September 26, 2025
Catalina gave me so much second-hand anxiety
September 13, 2024
I would die for Catalina.
September 5, 2025
3.5 stars
This is a character study with no plot, which will be difficult for many readers—and perhaps hurt the book for me as well; I appreciated it, I mildly liked it, but it didn’t touch me deeply. Nonetheless, I think it is good.
The narrator, Catalina, is in her final year at Harvard, but undocumented, thus unable to legally work and with a blank future gaping before her. The book does a strong job of developing Catalina’s personality and those of the people closest to her, who all feel messy and real and believable.
It’s also excellent at showing the psychological impacts of being undocumented. “Subtle” is perhaps the wrong word—you won’t come away confused about what the book is about or what the author thinks of it—maybe “nuanced”? It’s showing rather than telling, despite being mostly narrative summary: by telling us about Catalina’s life, the book is showing us how her immigration status affects her without having to directly say so. It keeps it grounded in the personal and the everyday, rather than leaping for the most extreme possible scenarios, and the characters are all so very individual and human and imperfect; no one is a cardboard stand-in for anything. At any rate I think it handles the topic well and artfully. It’s also a quick read, as is best for a story so focused on character rather than plot. I maybe liked The Undocumented Americans by this author a little better, but wouldn’t hesitate to recommend either.
This is a character study with no plot, which will be difficult for many readers—and perhaps hurt the book for me as well; I appreciated it, I mildly liked it, but it didn’t touch me deeply. Nonetheless, I think it is good.
The narrator, Catalina, is in her final year at Harvard, but undocumented, thus unable to legally work and with a blank future gaping before her. The book does a strong job of developing Catalina’s personality and those of the people closest to her, who all feel messy and real and believable.
It’s also excellent at showing the psychological impacts of being undocumented. “Subtle” is perhaps the wrong word—you won’t come away confused about what the book is about or what the author thinks of it—maybe “nuanced”? It’s showing rather than telling, despite being mostly narrative summary: by telling us about Catalina’s life, the book is showing us how her immigration status affects her without having to directly say so. It keeps it grounded in the personal and the everyday, rather than leaping for the most extreme possible scenarios, and the characters are all so very individual and human and imperfect; no one is a cardboard stand-in for anything. At any rate I think it handles the topic well and artfully. It’s also a quick read, as is best for a story so focused on character rather than plot. I maybe liked The Undocumented Americans by this author a little better, but wouldn’t hesitate to recommend either.
March 30, 2024
I really wanted to like this book more than I did. Catalina is born in Ecuador and goes to live with her grandparents in the U.S. when her parents are killed in a car crash. She's very bright and gets into Harvard but doesn't seem to fit in everywhere and worries that because she's still an immigrant she won't have the same opportunities. She has many experiences--both good and bad--but I got bogged down by all the details and didn't enjoy it as much as I'd hoped.
Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!
July 10, 2024
This is quite frankly the most deranged, ridiculous and offensive piece of "literature" I've ever suffered through reading. Getting the ARC for free was still too much to pay. Zero stars.
February 1, 2024
When Catalina begins at Harvard, she isn't sure what to expect - I wasn't either, being unfamiliar with Cornejo Villavicencio. A semi-autobiographical story enfolds as we follow the funniest, wittiest and most real college student I ever met! Catalina is undocumented. Her college is aware, but she keeps the secret close. It defines her as she thinks about almost every moment in every interaction of her life. Wouldn't you? She could be deported at any moment.
Living through Catalina's four years at Harvard were a breath of fresh air that I didn't know I needed. I loved her story, her realness and her sometimes crazy interactions. This story is not just about an undocumented and brilliant young woman - this story in many ways is about all undocumented young people as well as all young women! Grab this story, you won't be disappointed. Now to grad the UNAMERICANS next!
#KarlaCornejoVillavicencio #Randomhouse #catalina
Living through Catalina's four years at Harvard were a breath of fresh air that I didn't know I needed. I loved her story, her realness and her sometimes crazy interactions. This story is not just about an undocumented and brilliant young woman - this story in many ways is about all undocumented young people as well as all young women! Grab this story, you won't be disappointed. Now to grad the UNAMERICANS next!
#KarlaCornejoVillavicencio #Randomhouse #catalina
September 6, 2024
I was excited to love Catalina, and while I connected with parts of the story, it just didn’t hit as hard as I expected. There were relatable moments, but overall, it didn’t quite pull me in.
November 17, 2025
“I Spent the summer before my senior year at Harvard interning at America's third-most-prestigious literary magazine. Does that sound like a setup for a romantic comedy? I thought so, too.”
Hey, just so you know, It's not that romantic, it doesn't have any laugh AND IT IS NOT A DARK ACADEMIA!
January 15, 2024
There’s a gripping vulnerability to this book that isn’t lost amidst how funny the storytelling frequently is. The main character in this is absolutely chaotic in a way that is incredibly amusing, adds to the plot, but doesn’t distract from the commentary being made. This book felt nostalgic, frequently an amalgam of love, grief, longing, and humor. I don’t share any of the defining experiences that the main character goes through, but reading this book felt like a glimpse into the complicated emotions that such experiences might have brought about. I appreciated how plain the writing makes it that there is nuance to every feeling that Catalina has towards the circumstances of her existence. Every line of this book made me feel something, be it shock, outrage, sadness, amusement, or bewilderment. There were many topics addressed and parts of this book that were very heavy and emotional, and the author did a wonderful job of writing them so that they weren’t jarring or a screeching halt to the tone of the book, but rather simply another part of Catalina and her life for the reader to embrace.
None of the characters were definable by any one thing. They didn’t feel like archetypes and they evoked a multitude of emotions throughout the book. Even characters that I thought would act or respond to a situation in a certain way consistently surprised me. This book’s characters felt like real, unpredictable people, who were at times harsher, less shallow, or more easygoing than expected.
There were times when I felt that the timeline of the story was a bit confusing. Especially at the beginning of the book, things jump around a lot throughout the course of Catalina’s life, and I had a hard time pinning down what year it was when the story being told took place and determining if the story was being told by Catalina while was in her senior year or in retrospect by an older version of herself.
The story told was impressively complex and poignant; the fairly short number of pages it was written in do nothing to lessen its impact. The shifts in the narration take only as much time as necessary for clarity—it is a fast-paced story that I found impossible to be bored with. This is definitely outside of the genres and types of books that I normally read, but I’m genuinely so glad that I read it.
None of the characters were definable by any one thing. They didn’t feel like archetypes and they evoked a multitude of emotions throughout the book. Even characters that I thought would act or respond to a situation in a certain way consistently surprised me. This book’s characters felt like real, unpredictable people, who were at times harsher, less shallow, or more easygoing than expected.
There were times when I felt that the timeline of the story was a bit confusing. Especially at the beginning of the book, things jump around a lot throughout the course of Catalina’s life, and I had a hard time pinning down what year it was when the story being told took place and determining if the story was being told by Catalina while was in her senior year or in retrospect by an older version of herself.
The story told was impressively complex and poignant; the fairly short number of pages it was written in do nothing to lessen its impact. The shifts in the narration take only as much time as necessary for clarity—it is a fast-paced story that I found impossible to be bored with. This is definitely outside of the genres and types of books that I normally read, but I’m genuinely so glad that I read it.
August 29, 2024
⭐️2.5⭐️
This had the potential to be really good but it all felt very disorganized and surface level
This had the potential to be really good but it all felt very disorganized and surface level
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