Goodreads Monday is a weekly meme that was started by @Lauren’s Page Turners but is now currently being hosted by Emily @ Budget Tales Book Blog. This meme is quite easy to follow – just randomly pick a book from your to-be-read list and give the reasons why you want to read it. It is that simple.

This week’s book:

Olga Dies Dreaming by Xóchitl González

Blurb from Goodreads

A blazing talent debuts with the tale of a status-driven wedding planner grappling with her social ambitions, absent mother, and Puerto Rican roots, all in the wake of Hurricane Maria

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.

Set against the backdrop of New York City in the months surrounding the most devastating hurricane in Puerto Rico’s history, Olga Dies Dreaming is a story that examines political corruption, familial strife and the very notion of the American dream–all while asking what it really means to weather a storm.

Why I Want To Read It

Let us all welcome the first Monday of 2022! I hope you all had a blast celebrating the holiday season, that you enjoyed it with your family and loved ones like I did. For the members of the work force like me, sadly, it is time to go back to work (HAHA). For accountants, it is doubly challenging with the year-end statutory compliances looming large. Nevertheless, I hope this new year brings us all prosperity, peace, harmony, healing, recovery, and happiness. The most important thing is for all of us to have a clean bill of health, especially with COVID19 still remaining a huge threat. I fervently hope that our scientists will make another breakthrough so that this pandemic would end soon; we’ve been dealing with it for quite some time already.

The start of the year is usually tedious not only because of my job but because I have to complete my traditional reading wrap up. Nevertheless, the new year also brings with it an opportunity to delve deeper into the world of literature. It is also a chance to share books in my growing reading list through Goodreads Monday updates. Lately, I have been featuring books I recently added to my reading list. I will carry on with this in the coming weeks. However, there is one small tweak: I will be featuring books that are going to be released in 2022. With this, I am kicking it off with Xóchitl González’s debut novel Olga Dies Dreaming.

Before 2021 ended, I kept encountering Olga Dies Dreaming in most anticipated lists. At first, I was a little apprehensive for the book’s title did not appeal to me but it did pique my interest. A couple more encounters with the book was enough to persuade me to add it to my growing reading list, the first 2022 book to do so. Contrary to my impression, the book is riddled (or at least it appears to be) with heavy hitting subjects and I can only surmise that the American Dream is going to be prominently featured in the story. I also added it to my own 2022 Books I Look Forward To List. The actual publication date for the book is tomorrow, January 4, and I am crossing my fingers that I could gain a copy of the book soon.

How about you fellow reader? What are the most recent additions to your reading lists? Perhaps you could share it in the comment box. For now, happy Monday! I hope you will all have a great week ahead! And as always, happy reading!

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