A review by lizzillia
Say Hello to My Little Friend by Jennine Capó Crucet

4.5

Published 5th March 2024. The opening chapter of this novel really got to me and left me wondering what I was going to be experiencing as I was reading. The opening chapter is the voice of Lolita, an orca who has spent many, many years in the Seaquarium in Miami and it is the story of how she got there. And throughout the novel we keep hearing her voice - which I loved. Anyway, the story itself revolves around Izzy, who was brought up by his Tia after coming to Miami from Cuba on a raft aged seven. He wanted to be a Pitbull impersonator but after getting legal warnings, he decided to model himself on the Al Pacino character, Tony Montana, from the movie Scarface - a film I've never scene but that didn't affect my reading of the novel. In the film, apparently Tony has a tiger but after a visit to the Seaquarium, Izzy seems to form a connection to Lolita, who invades his thought, and goes in a direction that I never expected. Izzy also wants to find out more about his passage to Miami as he thinks this could be a lucrative market to get into and starts asking questions about his journey and his mother to the wrong people. In fact what with Lolita's voice telling her stories, and Izzy's search for the truth about his journey on the raft, you do get taken to some pretty dark places and as for the ending - well. I enjoyed the descriptions of Miami and particularly, I loved Lolita. As for Izzy, I followed him on his quest to become Tony Montana and his almost coming-of-age as he realised through his questions that maybe the story that he had been told about his journey was not in fact the true one, and as he realised that maybe what he thought was important actually wasn't. I followed him and ended up in a place that I just didn't think I would ever end up in. A book that led me into some very surprising places.