Last Night in Brooklyn, Xochitl Gonzalez
Last Night in Brooklyn, Xochitl Gonzalez
List: $22.99 | Sale: $16.09
Club: $11.49

Last Night in Brooklyn
A Novel

Author: Xochitl Gonzalez

Narrator: Elizabeth Rodriguez

Unabridged: 7 hr 37 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/21/2026


Synopsis

NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2026 BY TIME, OPRAH DAILY, USA TODAY, PEOPLE, ELECTRIC LIT, HARPER'S BAZAAR, LITHUB, BOOK RIOT, PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY, TOWN & COUNTRY, SHE READS, LIBRARY JOURNAL, AND MORE!

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

“Elizabeth Rodriguez narrates this novel set in early 2000s Brooklyn with a youthful tone, a fine style, and a real understanding of the protagonist’s life.” — Kirkus

"Elizabeth Rodriguez captivates listeners with her performance of this richly detailed, atmospheric novel set in Brooklyn, New York...Rodriguez deftly shifts tones and accents to bring the novel’s complex, relatable characters to life." — Booklist

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 neighborhood 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 neighborhood 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 neighborhood, 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 color 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.

A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books

About Xochitl Gonzalez

Xochitl Gonzalez is the New York Times bestselling author of the award-winning novel Olga Dies Dreaming and the Reese’s Book Club Pick Anita de Monte Laughs Last. She is a contributor to The Atlantic, where she was recognized as a 2023 Pulitzer Prize finalist in Commentary. A native Brooklynite and proud public school graduate, Gonzalez holds a BA from Brown University and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.


Reviews

Goodreads review by SH on August 22, 2025

Here she goes again! Xochitl Gonzalez has a gift for writing about place and its evolution. I couldn't put this book down. From start to finish I was enchanted by the rich narration that made me feel like each of the characters was someone I knew in a past life. The point of view is reflective. Gonz......more

Goodreads review by Meghan on December 07, 2025

Thank you to Flatiron Bookd for the ARC of Last Night in Brooklyn by Xochitl Gonzalez. This was a vivid and character-driven read. The author’s voice is sharp, modern, and emotionally rich, pulling you straight into the rhythm of Brooklyn life. The characters were easily the standout for me—complex,......more

Goodreads review by Valerie on January 30, 2026

4.5⭐ This novel was a love letter to a NYC that no longer exists due to gentrification. It also brings back the time around my graduation from college, post 9/11, but pre 2008 recession.  The novel does a wonderful job of encapsulating the feelings of hope for the future that occurred around this time......more

Goodreads review by Lyon.Brit.andthebookshelf on January 17, 2026

Book Report: Last Night in Brooklyn by Xóchitl Gónzalez Alicia is 26 and standing at the edge of a life that already feels decided…living at home…planning a wedding…following the safe path laid out for her. But one night in Fort Greene changes everything. Pulled into a magnetic circle of creatives…e......more

Goodreads review by Courtney on December 06, 2025

I won this in a giveaway I tried reading but I unfortunately couldn't get into it.......more


Quotes

Praise for Last Night in Brooklyn

"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, New York Times bestselling author of Blue Sisters

"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, author of Motherless Brooklyn and A Different Kind of Tension

“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, New York Times Bestselling author of Real Americans

"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, New York Times bestselling author of Wellness and The Nix

"This is a fantastic meditation on a very particular moment in Brooklyn history"
—Julia Rittenberg, Book Riot

"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

"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

"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

"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

"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