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A review by yangyvonne
Havana Lost by Libby Fischer Hellmann
3.0
While certainly an easy and entertaining read, I just felt like things were too contrived to get me to that next level. I bought this hook at an author’s event in 2013 and net the author, talking about my own trip to Cuba the prior year. This book brought back great memories of that trip and mixed in some home town locations too, so things were very familiar.
The problems I had were the overly dramatic and sweeping plot lines. Daughter of mafioso tries to run away with revolutionary and is ripped from him, having his child in America and marrying in an arranged wedding. That child then grows up to eventually meet his father in a twisted espionage type scenario that kills them both, but not before he impregnates a Cuban woman he just met and puts her on a boat to America. The resulting child ends up with the first woman (her grandmother) and involved in a plot about Coltran in Angola that goes back to a map her grandfather drew and gave to her father who in turn gave it to her mother who gave it to her grandmother. Dizzy? I was by this point. Then she’s kidnapped over the map, but not before starting a relationship with her grandmother’s original fiancé’s grandson and he gets shot!
Cue giant Scarface type ending with murders, and slow deaths, and the grandmother all alone in her empire.
The problems I had were the overly dramatic and sweeping plot lines. Daughter of mafioso tries to run away with revolutionary and is ripped from him, having his child in America and marrying in an arranged wedding. That child then grows up to eventually meet his father in a twisted espionage type scenario that kills them both, but not before he impregnates a Cuban woman he just met and puts her on a boat to America. The resulting child ends up with the first woman (her grandmother) and involved in a plot about Coltran in Angola that goes back to a map her grandfather drew and gave to her father who in turn gave it to her mother who gave it to her grandmother. Dizzy? I was by this point. Then she’s kidnapped over the map, but not before starting a relationship with her grandmother’s original fiancé’s grandson and he gets shot!
Cue giant Scarface type ending with murders, and slow deaths, and the grandmother all alone in her empire.