Our Last Days in Barcelona
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4.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
An NPR Best Book of 2022
“A master class in family and political drama, in star-crossed love stories and in capturing the enormity of what home is.”—NPR
When Isabel Perez travels to Barcelona to save her sister Beatriz, she discovers a shocking family secret in New York Times bestselling author Chanel Cleeton’s new novel.
Barcelona, 1964. Exiled from Cuba after the revolution, Isabel Perez has learned to guard her heart and protect her family at all costs. After Isabel’s sister Beatriz disappears in Barcelona, Isabel goes to Spain in search of her. Joining forces with an unlikely ally thrusts Isabel into her sister’s dangerous world of espionage, but it’s an unearthed piece of family history that transforms Isabel’s life.
Barcelona, 1936. Alicia Perez arrives in Barcelona after a difficult voyage from Cuba, her marriage in jeopardy and her young daughter Isabel in tow. Violence brews in Spain, the country on the brink of civil war, the rise of fascism threatening the world. When Cubans journey to Spain to join the International Brigades, Alicia’s past comes back to haunt her as she is unexpectedly reunited with the man who once held her heart.
Alicia and Isabel’s lives intertwine, and the past and present collide, as a mother and daughter are forced to choose between their family’s expectations and following their hearts.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this engrossing saga, Cleeton picks up the story of the Perez family from When We Left Cuba, following their exile in Florida after Castro's revolution. The eldest daughter, Isabel, 28, travels to Barcelona in 1964, worried that her sister Beatriz's job at the U.S. consulate there, a cover for CIA-supported anti-Castro work, has put her in danger. In Beatriz's apartment, Isabel discovers an old photo of herself as a toddler taken in Barcelona with her mother, Alicia, and an unknown man. Cleeton then shifts back to 1936, with Alicia taking Isabel to visit her parents in Spain after learning of her husband Emilio's infidelities. Alicia reconnects with Nestor, a doctor she had a crush on when they were both students. They fall in love while Alicia tries to help her unmarried pregnant sister, Consuela, keep her baby. Back in 1964, Isabel falls in love with Beatriz's friend, Diego, whom she later suspects is working for the CIA. There are satisfying endings for mother and daughter, with an unexpected revelation of how Alicia's choice made Isabel's possible a generation later. Cleeton's complex female characters and evocative settings, spiced with a dollop of political drama, make this a pleasing outing.
Customer Reviews
detailed, dramatic, emotional
OUR LAST DAYS IN BARCELONA by Chanel Cleeton is an adult, story of historical fiction focusing on the Perez family that runs parallel to and crosses over with the author’s WHEN WE LEFT CUBA.
SOME BACKGROUND: The Perez family are Cuban immigrants who fled to America during the Cuban Revolution in 1960. Second born daughter Beatriz Perez would be recruited by the CIA for her political ideology, in an effort to infiltrate the anti-Castro organizations. Eventually Beatriz would find herself in Barcelona Spain, and her family hasn’t heard from their sister in close to three weeks.
Told from three first person perspectives (Isabel, Alicia, and Rosa) following two timelines 1937 and 1964, OUR LAST DAYS IN BARCELONA focuses on Isabel Perez’s search in 1964 for her sister Beatriz Perez, who is currently working undercover for the CIA. Isabel Perez, married to a man she does not love, journeys to Spain to search for her missing sister where she will meet and fall in love with her sister’s American counterpart Diego.
Returning to 1937 Cuba, just prior to Spain’s involvement in the Second World War, Isabel and Beatriz’s mother Alicia Perez’s marriage is at risk of imploding. With her two year old daughter Isabel, Alicia Perez heads to Barcelona Spain, where she will stay for an extended visit with parents and younger sister Consuelo, a visit where Alicia will fall in love with someone else.
At the same time, Alicia’s best friend Rosa’s marriage has been rocked by the death of her husband Gonzalo, a man who left Cuba to fight for the Spanish during the revolution of 1934 but Rosa’s world continues to crumble as her in-laws refuse to acknowledge her existence never knowing that the man with whom Rosa has fallen in love, is a man close to their hearts.
OUR LAST DAYS IN BARCELONA is a detailed, dramatic and emotional story of family and relationships, betrayal and heart break. The premise is intense; the characters are flawed and dysfunctional; the romances are tragic and real.