I’m a big sucker for complex family stories and Olga Dies Dreaming certainly hit the spot. I was instantly a fan of Olga not only in her cleverness, but also in her difficult relationship with her mother. Listening to this audiobook kept bringing me back day after day until it was over! Keep reading this book review for my full thoughts.
Summary
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.
Review
(Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher. This has not impacted my review which is unbiased and honest.)
TW: rape
Olga Dies Dreaming is a story about family. About the relationships that shape us, hurt us, and that we can’t quite walk away from. The gaps between mother and child and all the inconsistencies we wish away. Our desire to live up to the expectations of our parents can be a curse we can’t quite lift, but Olga Dies Dreaming examines both Olga and Pedro’s attempts. After my initial interest in the family, I enjoyed the character development of Olga.
While there’s many different POV’s in Olga Dies Dreaming (including both Olga and Pedro), Olga was my favorite character. I loved how she’s very much in the midst of trying to figure it out. She’s intelligent, clever, and there were pieces of myself I saw in her. How we can be so caught up in chasing what we think we are supposed to want, what will supposedly make us happy. But then we realize that this quest leaves a bruise.
Listening to Olga Dies Dreaming on audiobook is definitely an experience I’d recommend. I love when different POV’s have different actors and all of them were so fabulous in the ways they made each one – their mannerisms and speeches – characteristic. It made listening to the interactions between the siblings even more fascinating to me to hear each of their perceptions of each other. I also am super intrigued to see what else they narrate which I don’t normally do!
Overall,
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Olga Dies Dreaming also explores our ideas of home. How we can be (dis)connected from our home and culture. These diaspora experiences that inspire doubts and questions of ownership. The added layers of examining the ultra wealthy – how they disguise their racism as ‘politics’ – was another element I enjoyed. Overall, Olga Dies Dreaming is definitely a book I enjoyed even if the ending kind of threw me for a loop (not the tone of the ending, just how things wrapped up).
Find Olga Dies Dreaming on Goodreads, Amazon, Indiebound, Bookshop.org, Google Play, Libro.fm & The Book Depository.