(Won in a Goodreads Giveaway)
This book was weird. If I hadn't won it in a Giveaway, I probably wouldn't have finished it. The writing wasn't anything impressive, the topic was strange, and the mystery was underwhelming.
One aspect of this book is that Domingo is writing a nonfiction book for other immigrants about how to best survive in America. This is a narrative device that does practically nothing for the story other than giving the author a chance to chat to the audience. This could've been used very effectively to give deeper insight into Domingo's character, but we didn't learn anything extra about him or the story during these moments. And it's not like the act of writing the book was built into the story either; at most, Domingo would offhandedly say he got some good writing done, but it doesn't impact the story or influence the overall narrative in the slightest.
My biggest problem with this book is that I was just really not vibing with the politics. I understand that Domingo was primarily targeting actual criminals. At some point, he gave us a list of people he'd found and deported and they were, like, drug crime lords. Fine. That's great. But he also talks about being sad when he has to deport a veteran for a relatively-minor infraction. This book came out two years ago, and it's not like I can blame the author for not being able to foresee how nightmarish and Nazi-like ICE raids and the treatment of undocumented immigrants has become these days. It's just unfortunate that this is the political climate I happened to read the book in. I know he's not technically ICE, but it's too close for comfort.
Abolish ICE and, on a more personal level, don't request books from the Goodreads Giveaways about iffy politics.
Domingo was not a very engaging character to me. All of his insecurities about being an immigrant felt surface-level, despite that being the only details we were given to build a character. I get the intention, and I respect that the author was pulling from her own experiences, but I don't think they were translated well into Domingo himself.
I also did not like Domingo talked about Monica. I don't know if this really counts as a spoiler, but if you want to be completely blind about the story, skip the rest of this paragraph. We're told repeatedly that Domingo is in love with Monica, but nothing about the story supports this. He barely knew her; I think they actually interacted for a full week at most. For what it's worth, I — the reader — also barely knew her, so it was hard to care about her as a love interest instead of a woman who had a lot of bad things happen to her. Being treated as a love interest made her worse, actually.
The whole mystery itself was weird at its best moments and unrealistic at its worst. The story played out in two very distinct plotlines that ended up having very little to do with each other, both of which had bad guys that were cartoonishly evil.
I just didn't enjoy reading this book, and, unfortunately, my biggest problem is with the concept itself. At the end of the day, this one just wasn't for me.