MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewEvocative, poetic passages about characters falling in love and the close bond between parents and children ... The novel views Puerto Rican culture from a distance, disconnected from the archipelago’s colonial history and lacking the nuance of lived experience ... I simply couldn’t extend poetic license to the author’s sloppiness with detail, about Puerto Rico and otherwise—which, however petty, was enough to take me out of the story ... The verisimilitude of Cummins’s present-day Puerto Rico is superficial at best, and references—to alfajores, Yaucono coffee, pasteles and alcapurrias—seem to be plucked from Wikipedia to add authenticity.
