A Best Book of 2023—USA Today, Vogue.com, HipLatina, Largehearted Boy

Your granddaughters are lost, Candelaria. Bianca, the brainy archaeologist, had to forfeit her life's work in Guatemala after her advisor seduced and deserted her. Paola, missing for over a decade, resurfaces in Boston as a brainwashed wellness cultist named Zoe. And Candy, the youngest, is a recovering addict who finds herself pregnant by a man she's not even sure ever existed. None of this concerns you of course, until a cataclysmic earthquake hits Boston. Now you must traverse the crumbling city to reach the Watertown Mall Old Country Buffet—for a reason you still cannot disclose—battling strange entities and your own strange past to save your granddaughters and possibly the world.

Melissa Lozada-Oliva delivers an unsettling, raucous debut novel written with tongue-in-cheek humor and sharp cultural criticism that unearths one troubled family's legacy, feasting on diasporic identity politics and examining the limits of bodily autonomy and the dangers of wanting to belong at any cost.

A sweeping, mystical novel following three generations of women as they grapple with muddled pasts and predetermined futures, Candelaria is a story of love that eats us alive.

"With tongue-in-cheek humor and sharp cultural criticism, this novel is an unforgettable exploration of diasporic identity politics and the dangers of wanting to belong at any cost."—Xochitl Gonzalez, The TODAY Show

"Lozada-Oliva's apocalyptic debut novel in prose is an ode to complicated family dynamics, the overwhelming ways love can consume and eat us alive."—Pamela Avila, USA Today