Part coming-of-age novel, part #MeToo commentary Villarreal-Moura’s debut is a delightful surprise delight that circumvents the politically correct hype trap.

Chile. 2015. Tatum Vega lives happily with her partner Vera and has her dream job at the local art museum. However, when Tatum is contacted by an investigative journalist for The New York Times the past she successfully escaped from resurfaces. An acclaimed writer, M. Dominguez, has been accused of sexual abuse by a young woman, the same man Tatum had a complex relationship with in her early twenties.

Full review: https://westwordsreviews.wordpress.com/2024/04/30/like-happiness-ursula-villarreal-moura/

like many books adjacent to #metoo the themes and issues touched in this novel are compelling, i did however found this particular novel dry and not all that unique when it came to exploring skewed power dynamics and so on.

Like Happiness by Ursula Villareal - Moura.
This debut novel was published a couple of weeks ago, I really enjoyed it , its an examination of a relationship between a young woman and a famous writer existing in the murkier grey area of a power imbalance within a relationship.
The book opens in Chile in 2015, Tatum is living with her partner Vera, happily working in a museum surrounded by art and she is content, her life is very different to the decade she spent after graduating from college, living in New York and spending her time with the famous author, M. Dominquez. Her peace and happiness is disturbed when a reporter contacts her from the US asking her for an interview, Dominquez has been accused of assault and the reporter wants to find out more about the man. 
The story unfolds in a dual narrative based in the present day and in a letter Tatum writes to Dominquez, remembering their relationship and questioning what actually happened between them. 
This was an excellent debut, I really liked the author's style of writing and this book had me hooked from the beginning. The relationship at the centre of the novel is  complicated and imbalanced and as Tatum examines her past, the author interrogates the role of gender, fame, identity, culture and power within this relationship. It's a quietly powerful read, tender and frustrating yet very easy to read and really beautifully written, a coming of age story with a difference yet there are so many elements readers will find familiar.
Recommend.
4 star.

An interesting look at an unbalanced power structure of a relationship, the narrator kept me intrigued throughout as she slowly released snippets from her past.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the chance to read this ARC.

I really enjoyed this book even though I’d didn’t know much about it before going into it. It’s about a young woman who is a student at college who becomes completely obsessed with a novel and decides to write to the author, only to have him write back. They develop a close friendship and eventually a sexual relationship which spans years. The narrative it also paralleled with the same women far in the future who has now severed ties with him, who gets told by a journalised that the author has been accused of some serious allegations by a number of women.

It had a very big My Dark Vanessa vibe with the way that she was quite young and he was a lot older than her and uses his influence and power over her to make himself feel good. I would have liked to have a bit more of the book focus on when she was older but it was so interesting reading about their relationship and how toxic it became, especially with the unhealthy power balance. The ending and the reason why she eventually cuts him off was so crazy and my jaw was on the floor reading that part.

This was such an enjoyable novel and I ate it up so fast because it really grabbed my attention. I’d recommend for fans of Vanessa but also books about writers and writing, and for if you enjoy books about obsession and damaging relationships.

Like Happiness was, in all honesty, a bit of a disappointment and most of that came down to the fact that I simply could not see the charisma of M. I was not convinced in the slightest that this man was worth having a semi-obsessive codependent relationship over. Those emails alone were just [fart noise] to me. I can’t describe it any other way.

So yeah. Safe to say this was not one for me!

The book is basically about what happens when our main character is contacted by a journalist following revelations of the aforementioned M’s sexual harassment. Tatum is well clear of M by now, but the talk raises the question of whether he did anything inappropriate with her (since she had not, before now, felt inclined to look back over a relationship that drained her in the way it did).

From the start, we know that M is skeevy. It’s clear from the blurb and from the opening chapters. This is not some big reveal at the end of it all. So I think the book needed to be working twice as hard to make M seem genuinely charismatic and the relationship all-consuming. Instead, I got obvious red flag after obvious red flag. Tatum is in the midst of being groomed, so clearly she won’t be aware of this, but to put it bluntly: you almost need to groom the reader too. Of course, you want to slot some red flags in there, since otherwise the reveal’s going to come out of nowhere, but here it was just. A damp squib.

Obviously this is a hard balance to strike. We know M is going to turn out to be an abuser, so it’s harder to hide those red flags effectively. I think what might have been better here would be if we didn’t know why the journalist was contacting Tatum about M. If, to us as well as her, it felt like just a bad breakup of a codependent relationship (with a freaking weird age gap, which already could clue us in). But instead, we know from the start that this story is about Tatum scouring her relationship after these revelations. So, it worked less well.

That’s not to say this book was badly written on a prose level: I read it quickly and I did enjoy the writing in that sense. It’s just, as I said, the entire thing came off like a damp squib. Maybe it won’t be this way for everyone, but that is, ultimately, my lasting impression.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for the ARC!>
This book was so beautifully written and unputdownable. I normally dislike novels that feature alternating timelines, but in this case, it was incredibly well done and impactful. The complicated relationship between the narrator and the people in her life, especially M, felt so real and so raw. I loved being inside of Tatum's head as she navigated finding herself alongside M and as she navigated maturing and seeing their relationship from his point of view, in addition to finding herself outside of her relationship to M.
I really liked the underlying themes of identity, especially as a Latina myself. Tatum's struggle with figuring out who she is and what she wants are very real, and this novel felt so true to life in a way that most novels I feel aren't. Throughout the whole thing, Tatum was doing the best she could, and I was rooting for her. I liked how real she felt, which is such a testament to the writing.
Ursula Villareeal-Moura is an incredibly talented author, and I want to read so much more of her work after this beautiful novel. I truly loved getting to know these characters and immersing myself in their world. I truly felt Tatum's betrayal, confusion, and reluctance to anger or hatred. These relationships are incredibly complicated, and they were navigated with grace and care by the author. I especially loved the ending as well. I would read this over and over again.

i feel like people who love the craft of writing tend to be people who fixate on certain moments and turn them into something else altogether. what is a memory of discovering a book for the first time that really makes you feel seen (in tatum's case feeling closer to her mexican identity) can become a turning point to an open world of possibility. it is only until we reflect upon our 20s and 30s with a new lens do we start to see that the relationships we may have held dear was toxic. this is the reality for tatum as she remains connected to a writer of whom she sent a letter to after discovering for the first time for over 10 years. there really isn't anything surprising here, but the writing is protective almost in the way villarreal-moura chooses to include revelations and i simply love this book for that.

I enjoyed seeing how the relationships unfold and how we get more insight into the development into intensity.

Like Happiness by Ursula Villarreal-Moura explores an imbalanced power dynamic in a relationship with a relatable narrator.