Olga Dies Dreaming

I liked how complex and easy to root for these characters were, even as they waded through gray areas of morality and made mistake after mistake. Olga is a wedding planner for the elite and her brother Prieto is a congressman. Both of them are of Puerto Rican descent, born and raised in Brooklyn. This novel explores their personal lives as well as the impact of Hurricanes Irma and Maria on Puerto Rico itself.

Olga and Prieto are both middle aged and still dealing with being abandoned (and subsequently emotionally abused) by their mother, although in different ways. Prieto has hidden himself behind a mask that is beginning to crack and Olga has avoided any kind of emotional connections. Prieto begins to question the way he's been doing things, while Olga meets the odd-yet-endearing Matteo.

This is an interesting examination of familial trauma, race, and gentrification that works in a lot of ways but ultimately tried to hit too many topics. One of my biggest issues was that the ending felt far too neat for me, like González needed to tie everything up in a bow. I felt like we went from realistic literary fiction to a run-of-the-mill romance novel in the 11th hour; it just didn't fit the tone of everything that preceded it.

Overall, I did enjoy this though, it just ended up knocked down a few pegs for me. Everything from here on is spoiler territory, as there are some aspects of the ending that rubbed me the wrong way. Content warning for discussion of rape ahead. The first is that the ‘third act breakup' is preceded by Olga being raped and having a complete mental breakdown. It honestly felt like the assault was just a tool to get to this conflict, and could have been replaced by anything else. When she finally tells Matteo, he's like ‘wow that sucks and it's not your fault, but you can't ignore me when you're upset.' Like?? Maybe cut her a little more slack dude, she was literally just raped. Secondly, one of the unrealistic aspects of the ending is that Matteo just happens to be rich so he can say, ‘oh don't worry about getting a job, we can just be together and money doesn't matter!' How is he rich? He's a landlord. It's okay, though! He's a good landlord! He's fighting gentrification! By being a landlord! Especially coming right after the ‘sorry you were raped but don't ignore me' conversation, this just left a bad taste in my mouth. Matteo is supposed to be a good guy, we're supposed to be happy. I wasn't.

Like I said above, this is still a good book. I still recommend it. I just couldn't love it and have trouble looking past its faults.