No matter how hard or far he rode, she clung to his skin like the smell of sleep. His soul bore her brand, the wound deep and blackened and scarred over.

Reading this book was like watching a movie - every scene was perfectly described and I really felt enveloped in the atmosphere for the story. 

I loved the characters and the setting, but some aspects fell flat. For such short a book, there was so much repetition. (He’s a stranger to her now, she said vaqueros shouldn’t speak to her and slammed a door in his face.) Those repetitive lines and thought patterns of the main characters made for a very angsty romance, which can work, but here I felt like the ink would have been better used to flesh out more of the other plot lines. 

Nena’s refusal to stand up to her parents would have made more sense if we saw more of her father’s abuse, instead of mostly hearing about how he’s disliked and feared.

"I think about this often, about whether the past is real if we don't bring it into the present. Tree falling in the forest and all that.  I'm okay, I say.  I don't know if I am the tree or the no one who doesn't hear it."

An incredibly well done multi-generational story of multiple families. I loved the way each thread of plots and characters and themes wove together across time and boarders and families. These stories laid bare the atrocities of the immigration systems in the USA in a way that furthered the plots and without disrupting the pacing. A masterpiece of grief and love and struggle and resilience. Every character is nuanced and makes sometimes terrible and almost always necessary choices, and I couldn’t help but love all of them.

“What a luxurious thing, to feel. The pain a tender ache now that she could massage and curl into. For so long, she’s held the grief at bay.” 

Such a fun romance! I loved both the characters and really felt like they grew together. He-falls-first is almost always a win for me, and this one was no exception.

Very cozy, but I wish I’d read the ebook rather than the audiobook. I can handle some steam in audiobooks, but something about the way the narrators read the repetitiveness of “she/he said” and the spicy words in this one made me cringe. The ending also felt too inevitable, I wasn’t as excited for the couple because the stakes weren’t there. Still a cute story though!

I loved the premise of the “frigid” city woman getting her romance, but the pacing and the repetitiveness of their conversations made the whole book fall flat for me. Still a fun and fast read, but I was sure there’d be more!

“It made my heart soar and throb and burn with hope.”

I normally love a story about a dysfunctional family, but this one was just annoying. The racism, xenophobia, and abuse from different family members was repeatedly quoted without commentary. The "lexicon" is also so repetitive that it can only be entertaining to the family it came from. I picked up this book because of a description promising an autobiography of an anti-fascist family during Mussolini's rule. Instead, this book is the same tired arguments about petty issues between family members and friends with every now and then a huge revelation that someone was arrested for anti-fascist activity without ever covering what those activities were, what the political or social changes included (except for paying more for groceries and losing their maid/self-described "slave"), or why the family considered themselves anti-fascist. 
The detached storytelling made all the characters blend together, and without a strong connection to the individuals, there is nothing left to be interested in.

So cute! Required a lot of suspending of disbelief, but was a nice comfort book. The dialogue is very modern and the relationships all felt rushed (Insta-love and Insta-friendships too) so I would have preferred a longer book with more development on the relationships (more show and less tell as well) but for the length, it was a quick and fun read. 

Fascinating and heartbreaking look at everything in the title. The meandering between topics didn’t bother me, but the second half of the book did feel too repetitive. An incredibly important book that was easy to engage with.  

I’m honestly speechless. I need to read and reread and reread again.