Bite-sized book reviews
Bite-sized book reviews
I picked this up purely to fulfill my “Book that takes place in South America” line on my library book challenge. I lucked out because it was excellent. Set in 1960’s Ecuador (which I promise is not a negative, it’s quite charming), Malena is in search of her mother that may be alive after all. A latin Mama Mia, if you will. Malena finds a note written by her mother, whom she was told was dead her whole life, shortly after her father’s suicide and this sends her on a quest to uncover the secrets of her past. She only has an address and the intial “A” to go off of and finds herself impersonating another girl amidst a family with 4 sisters, all starting with the letter A. The book jumps back and forth from present to the 1940’s as we get to piece together clues from each sister’s past. There are enough love triangles here to fill a geometry book (that was bad, also the only think I could think with triangles in it) and the final pieces to the puzzle come together very nicely at the end. I enjoyed this way more than expected. My only advice would be to really pay attention to whose story is being told each chapter, it matters, and also gets confusing with so many characters with similar names.