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It's 2017, and Olga and her brother, Pedro "Prieto" Acevedo, are bold-faced names in their hometown of New York. Prieto is a popular congressman representing their gentrifying Latinx neighborhood in Brooklyn while Olga is the tony wedding planner for Manhattan's powerbrokers. Despite their alluring public lives, behind closed doors things are far less rosy. Sure, Olga can orchestrate the love stories of the 1%, but she can't seem to find her own...until she meets Matteo, who forces her to confront the effects of long-held family secrets... Twenty-seven years ago, their mother, Blanca, a Young Lord-turned-radical, abandoned her children to advance a militant political cause, leaving them to be raised by their grandmother. Now, with the winds of hurricane season, Blanca has come barreling back into their lives. Set against the backdrop of New York City in the months surrounding the most devastating hurricane in Puerto Rico's history, Olga Dies Dreaming is a story that examines political corruption, familial strife and the very notion of the American dream--all while asking what it really means to weather a storm.
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Loved this! It mixes sibling tenderness, generational love, new york politics, new york socialites, wedding planning locals vs gentrifiers, Young Lords, reclaiming of Puerto Rico from the US colonizers, a distant yet overbearing mother who just wants to use her kids to liberate Puerto Rico, romance, drama, humor! It honestly packed a lot in. Ok and I know we’re supposed to feel mixed about the mother but she wrote damn good letters to her kids. I was highlighting and nodding my head v frequently.
The characters grow! Theyre interesting and have multi layers too. The rich and elite are given layers in this novel, too, but they’re…funny/embarrassing. I also learned more about Puerto Rico’s situation post- Hurricane Maria in 2017 (ps the US completely left PR to crumble, intentionally)
Read it!!