In short: Don’t underestimate this new novelist. She’s jump-starting the year with a smart romantic comedy that lures us in with laughter and keeps us hooked with a fantastically engaging story ... Presumably, Gonzalez is pulling at least some of these funny shenanigans from her own experience: She once worked as a wedding planner herself. But it’s the tremendous verve of her prose that makes these pages crackle ... Gonzalez develops a rich parallel story about Olga’s brother, Prieto ... If this is a novel about toxic family secrets, it’s also a novel about clandestine national schemes. Aside from a collection of winning characters and an ingenious plot, what’s most impressive about Olga Dies Dreaming is the way Gonzalez stretches the seams of the rom-com genre to accommodate her complex analysis of racial politics ... with remarkable dexterity, Olga Dies Dreaming transitions temporarily into a political thriller about the way Washington and powerful business interests conspire to profit from the island’s suffering ... Rarely does a novel, particularly a debut novel, contend so powerfully and so delightfully with such a vast web of personal, cultural, political and even international imperatives.

A multilayered debut about identity, race, the power of elites and the marginalisation of the poor ... [A] damning indictment of a world where the value of linen is prized more highly than compassion ... The author cloaks her polemic in page-turning prose. This deeply satisfying and nuanced novel shines a light on political corruption and the limits of capitalism. It’s also a study of the psychological fallout of poor parenting and a tender exploration of love in its many forms.

Gonzalez is clearly concerned with making sure her readers understand the historical injustices that have befallen Puerto Rico — and their contemporary consequences, which creates a novelistic challenge. How to illuminate a presumably poorly informed (I’m guilty) audience about complex sociopolitical realities without also knocking readers out of what John Gardner called fiction’s 'vivid and continuous dream'? ... Gonzalez’s main strategies are to allow Olga’s mother to edify the reader along with her children through her letters and to have characters speak to each other in blocks of exposition ... These lectures get the job done, but, along with frequent detours into back story, sometimes feel like a frustrating countercurrent to the momentum of the book’s present, ongoing plot ... When the novel turns its attention to storytelling, it is most affecting and most alive.

Taking place in the months surrounding the devastation of Hurricane Maria, Xochitl Gonzalez’s exploration of diasporic identity is irresistibly warm yet entirely uncompromising, ho[m]ing in on the weight of trying to make it in a country that has ravaged your own. The narrative trips along with evocative rhythm, a straight-shooting prose that, just like its heroes, hides a tender heart beneath a tough, wryly reflexive exterior. And when Hurricane Maria lands Gonzalez pulls no punches, centuries of systemic neglect and oppression contained in devastated infrastructure and two siblings’ unshakeable anger.

In Xochitl Gonzalez’s vibrant and raw debut, Olga Dies Dreaming, love and family drama crash into politics ... The real center of the story, which sometimes moves between the past (often in the form of letters) and the present, is Olga and Prieto’s reckoning with the tensions and contradictions that have made them who they are ... With so many different moving parts and conflicts, Gonzalez’s story sometimes seems overstuffed, with writing that isn’t quite as beautiful as the journey. But the characters and the issues they’re grappling with are deeply compelling. Olga Dies Dreaming delivers a roller coaster’s worth of beautiful highs and lows. All told, it’s an experience worth savoring.

In her ambitious debut novel, Gonzalez explores such weighty topics as coercion, rape, gentrification, and the colonial exploitation so harshly exposed in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Shining throughout, however, is the redeeming quality of love in all its iterations: romantic, fraternal, paternal, patriotic, and ultimately, love of self.

Warmhearted but tough-minded ... Vivid portraits of various friends and relatives capture the richness of Nuyorican culture, and sharp-eyed observations of the Brooklyn social and political landscape underpin a busy plot ... Debut novelist Gonzalez’s stinging and knowledgeable commentary about the American sociopolitical order that keeps Black and brown people poor and powerless suggests that radical remedies are called for, even if she gives the personal dramas of her appealing main characters pleasingly hopeful final acts ... Atmospheric, intelligent, and well informed: an impressive debut.

Edifying ... The expository dialogue often feels stilted, but the characters’ yearning to see the island thrive adds passion and complexity. Gonzalez elevates this family drama with a great deal of insight on the characters’ diaspora and politics.