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Last Night in Brooklyn
- Author
- Xochitl Gonzalez
- Narrator
- Elizabeth Rodriguez
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Publishing
- Publish Date
- 18 June 2026
- Run Time
- 7 hours 37 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
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What to expect
New York Times-bestselling author Xochitl Gonzalez delivers a captivating story about a young woman whose life becomes ensnared in her glamorous neighbour’s secret past
SPRING, 2007
At twenty-six, Alicia Canales Forten feels smothered by her future. She’s in a long-distance relationship, living at home with her mother’s beliefs, saving up for her wedding to a future doctor. But after Alicia ventures out one night in the neighbourhood of Fort Greene, Brooklyn, she finds herself lured by the siren song of youth and possibility that the striving crowd of creatives holds, and moves in.
No one embodies this milieu more than La Garza, a larger-than-life, up-and-coming fashion designer whose epic house parties fuel neighbourhood lore. La Garza’s life, observed by Alicia from her apartment across the street, seems to hold the allure and fearlessness Alicia has never dared to imagine for herself.
But when Alicia’s wealthy banker cousin moves to the neighbourhood, she finds herself increasingly drawn into both his and La Garza’s precarious lives.
Against the backdrop of a potentially life-changing presidential election and a looming once-in-a-generation fiscal crisis, Last Night in Brooklyn explores the dark compromise of the American Dream for people of colour living, unknowingly, in the twilight of a cultural moment. It is a story about everything money can buy – and the destruction of what it can’t.
Critics Review
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The Brooklyn story I've been waiting for, replete with all the glamor, stakes, and capital D drama of a modern Great Gatsby. No one writes about ambition, money, class, and the cost of survival in a world driven by profit over people quite like Gonzalez. Equally, no one captures joy, community, and the sweetness of belonging like her either. Thrillingly alive and electrically entertaining from start to finish, Last Night in Brooklyn is a triumph
COCO MELLORS
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Xochitl’s Gonzalez’s pages are packed full of the splendor and vertigo of split identities and divided allegiances, which marks her and her book as Brooklyn to the bone. A student of urban betrayal and communal memory, she not only knows where the bodies are buried, she knows how to make them get up and dance again
JONATHAN LETHEM
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It is a treat to read Xochitl Gonzalez, who writes with intimacy, immediacy, and singular charm that seizes you from the first page and never lets go. Last Night in Brooklyn is a stunning achievement: The Great Gatsby reimagined for Black and brown Brooklyn, elegantly evocative and chattily profound. It is at once an exploration into the cost of ambition, a loving portrait of the people and places we are always on the verge of losing, and a fitting elegy for what is already gone
RACHEL KHONG
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Xochitl Gonzalez invites us into a world of fame and fashion, money and power, ambition and jealousy, love and heartbreak, all set against the backdrop of a Brooklyn rendered with aching beauty and shimmering detail. A thrilling portrait of a city, a country, and a group of friends all teetering at the edge of seismic transformation
NATHAN HILL
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[Gonzalez's] bracing point of view animates a propulsive storyline strung with memorable characters...Brilliant party scenes, tart dialogue, and dramatic plot developments further enrich this gripping work, another step forward for the talented Gonzalez. Smart, tough-minded, and passionate: a pleasure from start to finish
KIRKUS
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This is a fantastic meditation on a very particular moment in Brooklyn history
BOOK RIOT
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Xochitl Gonzalez really knows how to render time and place, and this novel takes you back to Brooklyn in 2007 on the verge of massive change. It promises a story of class and gentrification and imagining different lives, and also a story about being a person who knows people in a way that feels valuable
LITHUB
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This novel challenges the life that money can buy and the compromises of fiscal assimilation for people of color chasing the 'American Dream.'
ELECTRIC LIT
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Part love letter to New York’s Black and Latinx communities, part historical record of Brooklyn’s Fort Greene neighborhood pre-gentrification, Gonzalez follows up on her New York Times- bestselling book Olga Dies Dreaming with a novel that is both witty and deeply sincere
BUSTLE
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Last Night in Brooklyn is an immersive story about standing at the edge of your life and realizing how quickly the ground can move under you
APPLE BOOKS
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With fascinating characters, rapid-fire dialogue, poignant backstories, sexy and dangerous relationships, excruciating and sardonically funny situations, sharp psychological and social insights, vibrant descriptions, abrupt shifts, showdowns, and revelations, this is an all-the-way-live novel of dreams, anguish, vengeance, and liberation
BOOKLIST
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Gonzalez’s latest novel brings the enclave of Fort Greene, Brooklyn, to brilliant light. The author of Olga Dies Dreaming and Anita de Monte Laughs Last is a master at shaping distinct characters that leave an indelible impression on each other and themselves. Exploring potential, obligation, and living out your wildest dreams, this is literary fiction at its most evocative
HARPER'S BAZAAR
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Since her bestselling debut Olga Dies Dreaming, Gonzalez has established herself as one of our sharpest chroniclers of ambition, class, and the hidden costs of “making it”
OPRAH DAILY
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A vibrant coming-of-age story set in Brooklyn in 2007, this novel follows Alicia Canales Forten and her obsession with her alluring neighbor, La Garza. Gonzalez captures the energy of a neighborhood shaped by gentrification and a nation on the brink of financial ruin
THE BOSTON GLOBE
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New York Times bestselling author Xochitl Gonzalez delivers a captivating story about a young woman whose life becomes ensnared in her glamorous neighbor’s secret past, laying bare the mounting tensions at play in a rapidly gentrifying, early 2000’s Fort Greene, Brooklyn
NERD DAILY
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Xochitl Gonzalez
- Narrator
- Elizabeth Rodriguez
- Duration
- 7 hours 37 minutes
- Release Date
- 18 June 2026
- ISBN
- 9781037211461
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Publishing
- Genre
- Fiction: literary and general non-genre
Synopsis
Bloomsbury presents Last Night in Brooklyn by Xochitl Gonzalez, read by Elizabeth RodriguezNew York Times-bestselling author Xochitl Gonzalez delivers a captivating story about a young woman whose life becomes ensnared in her glamorous neighbour’s secret past SPRING, 2007 At twenty-six, Alicia Canales Forten feels smothered by her future. She’s in a long-distance relationship, living at home with her mother’s beliefs, saving up for her wedding to a future doctor. But after Alicia ventures out one night in the neighbourhood of Fort Greene, Brooklyn, she finds herself lured by the siren song of youth and possibility that the striving crowd of creatives holds, and moves in. No one embodies this milieu more than La Garza, a larger-than-life, up-and-coming fashion designer whose epic house parties fuel neighbourhood lore. La Garza’s life, observed by Alicia from her apartment across the street, seems to hold the allure and fearlessness Alicia has never dared to imagine for herself. But when Alicia’s wealthy banker cousin moves to the neighbourhood, she finds herself increasingly drawn into both his and La Garza’s precarious lives. Against the backdrop of a potentially life-changing presidential election and a looming once-in-a-generation fiscal crisis, Last Night in Brooklyn explores the dark compromise of the American Dream for people of colour living, unknowingly, in the twilight of a cultural moment. It is a story about everything money can buy – and the destruction of what it can’t.
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