Amazon says: "The García sisters—Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofía—and their family must flee their home in the Dominican Republic after their father’s role in an attempt to overthrow brutal dictator Rafael Trujillo is discovered. They arrive in New York City in 1960 to a life far removed from their existence in the Caribbean. In the wondrous but not always welcoming U.S.A., their parents try to hold on to their old ways as the girls try to find new lives: by straightening their hair and wearing American fashions, and by forgetting their Spanish. For them, it is at once liberating and excruciating to be caught between the old world and the new. Here they tell their stories about being at home—and not at home—in America."

This ticked a lot of boxes for me: Central American/Spanish language influence, the immigrant experience, NYC, 1960s. And it met all my expectations. ( )

The way they're written, the scenes are rich with detail and subtle emotion, but somehow they don't come together into a satisfying whole. I'm not sure what it is because I like the reverse chronology and I like the scenes, as I've mentioned. Maybe it's that the characters overall don't seem three-dimensional. Yoyo's is the clearest voice, and I didn't actually find her sections particularly interesting. I wanted more of the sisters or of Mami or Papi. As it is, the novel is pretty good, but it didn't really snag me and draw me in. I finished it, but it left me unsatisfied.

As a side note, the Kindle edition was poorly edited, and that was somewhat distracting. ( )

Since the structure of this book is retrograde, each section preceding the one it follows, it's really a series of memories, and not a satisfying one. ( )

This is the first book written by Alvarez. I had previous read "Saving the World" by her and I thought I would give this a try. It was an entertaining book about the immigration experience of the Garcia family. An affluent family from the Dominican Republic, they are forced to leave the island because of the Doctor father's involvement in a failed coup against the dictator(Trujilo). The book deals with how the family assimilates into the American culture. This book was written in 1991 and the time is from 1956-1989. The problem that I and other reviewers had was Alvarez's use of a reverse time line and multiple narrators. This led to making it hard to latch on to any of the 4 girls because the movement from one to the other and the shifting time lines. I would have liked to know more about the adult girls rather than the young ones. That being said, Alvarez is an excellent writer and this was a good story. It does give you a history lesson. ( )

I really liked it. Alvarez has nearly mellifluous writing. At first I had a little trouble keeping the sisters straight because some of the early stories use "the oldest sister"/"the youngest sister" instead of names, but after a few of the chapters I got it figured out. The fear in the time of the dictatorship is rendered so vividly. It's hard to think about how recent that was and how many generations were affected in these families that got split up due to immigration, imprisonment, and violence. ( )