Like Happiness

Like Happiness is the debut novel by Ursula Villarreal-Moura, and what an impactful debut it is. Told in dual timelines between the early 2000s in the United States in 2015 in Chile, it examines a Chicana woman’s young adulthood with a famous author friend and the complicated relationship they had until it all fell apart.

Special thanks to Celadon Books and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book!

Summary

In 2001, Tatum Vega is a college student double majoring in English and Art History. She’s the only Latina student in her classes and feels disconnected from everything there. Then she comes across a collection of short stories written by M. Domínguez, and it speaks to her on a deep level. After sending him a fan letter, she and the author (Mateo) form a sort of friendship that will carry on for more than a decade. Tatum and Mateo orbit each other’s lives, but will they ever have the romantic relationship she craves with him? Years later, Tatum lives in Chile with her partner, Vera, when she gets a phone call. Mateo has been accused of abuse, and Tatum has been asked to corroborate the story. Tatum must come to terms with all that happened between her and Mateo over the course of a decade.

Review

I didn’t know what to expect going into Like Happiness, but this book instantly seized my full attention. It’s told in two timelines: Most of it is written in second person, Tatum writing a long letter to an author named Mateo, addressing all of her thoughts to him as she recounts their full relationship. Interspersed are shorter chapters from 2015, when Tatum is living in Chile and has been asked to corroborate a story of Mateo’s alleged abuse of other women.

Books written in the second person are usually hard for me to get into, but Like Happiness is written in such a natural and engaging way that this narrative device never bothered me here. The majority of the book unfolds as Tatum tells Mateo (“you”) her full account of everything that happened between them, from her isolated years as a university student to a directionless young adult to a woman betrayed by the man she thought she could trust. Tatum and Mateo have a complicated, indistinct relationship, always on the cusp of something more, but always kept just distant enough that they’re only orbiting each other.

A major theme throughout Like Happiness is Tatum’s love of literature. She sees the world through the eyes of the books she’s read, identifying with characters and picking up on the literary techniques that make books transcendent. She’s intelligent, but she also lacks confidence and direction. Despite the support she gets from her parents, her friends—especially Mateo—don’t necessarily bolster her self-esteem.

As the novel progresses, Tatum’s relationship with Mateo becomes more and more disjointed and unsavory. Why does he treat her the way he does? What does she really mean to him? Why does she seem to care for him more than he does for her? Eventually, the truth comes out and changes Tatum’s perspective on everything.

Final Thoughts

Like Happiness is an immersive story that puts us fully in the mind of Tatum as she navigates young adulthood in the 2000s and into the 2010s. She’s a deep thinker, about literature and Latinx identity and achieving the right career path eventually, but she’s lost in a way so many can relate to. It’s not the kind of book I normally read or react so strongly to, but it completely absorbed me. I already look forward to reading more from Ursula Villarreal-Moura.

Get the Book

You can buy Like Happiness here – it’s available as a hardcover, ebook, and audiobook.

Like Happiness by Ursula Villarreal-Moura
Audience	Adult
Genre	Literary Fiction
Setting	NY; TX; MA; Chile
Number of Pages	304
Format I Read	Ebook (NetGalley ARC)
Original Publication Date	March 26, 2024
Publisher	Celadon Books

Official Summary

Named an Indie Next pick, and a Most Anticipated Book by Today.com, ELLE, Electric Literature, Them, HipLatina, LGBT Reads, Debutiful, LA Daily News, and more

A searing debut about the complexities of gender, power, and fame, told through the story of a young woman’s destructive relationship with a legendary writer.

It’s 2015, and Tatum Vega feels that her life is finally falling into place. Living in sunny Chile with her partner, Vera, she spends her days surrounded by art at the museum where she works. More than anything else, she loves this new life for helping her forget the decade she spent in New York City orbiting the brilliant and famous author M. Domínguez.

When a reporter calls from the US asking for an interview, the careful separation Tatum has constructed between her past and present begins to crumble. Domínguez has been accused of assault, and the reporter is looking for corroboration.

As Tatum is forced to reexamine the all-consuming but undefinable relationship that dominated so much of her early adulthood, long-buried questions surface. What did happen between them? And why is she still struggling with the mark the relationship left on her life?

Told in a dual narrative alternating between her present day and a letter from Tatum to Domínguez, recounting and reclaiming the totality of their relationship, Like Happiness explores the nuances of a complicated and imbalanced relationship, catalyzing a reckoning with gender, celebrity, memory, Latinx identity, and power dynamics.