Olga and her brother share a narrative in which their radicalized mother abandons them for a cause, leaving them to forge a path as Latinx people trying to break into white centric career paths. As they cope with childhood trauma and try to make their mark, they each reach crisis points at intersections of their identity as gentrification and corruption encroach and subsume them.

As a whole, I’d describe this as incredibly ambitious, and that’s why it didn’t quite succeed, for me. No source of narrative tension introduced, plot beat or otherwise, gets actually resolved or interrogated in any meaningful way. It scratches the surface of a lot of issues while eschewing things already introduced.

The resolution with Olga herself and the romantic interest is basically a deus ex machina moment off the back of a sexual assault that becomes a plot device for that relationship. I really, really disliked the handling of that. But the issue persists in every moment that is supposed to have, causing me to put the number one criticism I have as unearned moments. The prose work is generic and macro and there’s no weight given to anything that happens as a result. It never fully managed to have me invested in any particular thread, nor was I convinced the narrative itself was.