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Today, September 15th, is the official start to Hispanic Heritage Month which goes until October 15th. But, you should know by now, however, that October Is For Witches at Heart.Wants.Books. Therefore, we’re hosting Virtual Book Club next month with an historical (kinda) witchy read. Well, at least the personal history of the fictional Aunts in Alice Hoffman’s Practical Magic. Please join us in reading The Rules of Magic and sign up here to join us on Friday, October 21, 2022 at 7:30pm Central Time. Costumery and festive snacks and beverages encouraged!

Dear readers, it is not often that I consume a book because real life gets in the way.  Work, kids, chores, and just distraction are usually limiting my ability to binge anything.  However, none of this interfered with me reading most of Our Last Days in Barcelona by Chanel Cleeton in less than 30 hours, including a work day, solo parenting, and sleeping.  If you’re following along on Goodreads, you may wonder why it says I took six days for this short (around 300 pages), engaging title.  What had happened was Ashley and I realized we wanted to hit pause on our blog title for Kindle Unlimited, so we did.  We were balancing reading titles to review here and a free for all on Kindle Unlimited, and the day we started this title, we realized we both had some Kindle Unlimited titles that we had started and wanted to finish before they disappeared in our pause.  So, a couple of chapters into Our Last Days in Barcelona, I hit pause, finished my titles I’d borrowed from Kindle Unlimited, and when I picked it back up, well, I was hooked, and I stayed up well past bedtime to finish with no regrets.  

Way back two years ago, we read and reviewed Chanel Cleeton’s The Last Train to Key West and knew it wouldn’t be our last Cleeton title, and my only regret is that we waited so long.  It’s her third title, but a great entry point into her work.  If you have feelings about where to start in her work, please see the author’s website for the publication order and the years covered by each title.  Readers do note, all of Cleeton’s Cuban titles are connected.  I was delighted to see a family tree at the end of Our Last Days in Barcelona, which helped me to connect the rest of the dots.  I do want to note, this title is one of two (so far) that covers multiple timelines.  I have struggled with this in other titles, but not this one!  Both stories are linear and the connection of why they’re told together like this quickly becomes clear to the readers.  They were easy to keep separate and really enhanced the experience for me.

In Our Last Days in Barcelona, we have the story of Alicia Perez in 1936 and her daughter Isabel in 1964, both centered in Barcelona, although the Perez family is Cuban.  Isabel comes to Barcelona looking for her sister who’s stopped replying to letters and calls and finds much more than she’s expecting, including a family secret she longs to reveal.  This title might be best categorized as a historical family saga, but there’s also a bit of coming of age for our leads, as well as some romance, revolution, and even mystery too.  Perhaps the biggest theme for me was expectations of women, from society, culture, family, and self.  It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately with all of the different facets of life competing for my energy and attention and I was really struck by how it was woven through both story lines and how each of the characters faced her own struggles, which were definitely informed by all of the shoulding onto them.  Reading the story of mother and daughter at a similar impasse of life had me all up in my feelings because it was so plain how mom’s experiences shaped the way she raised her family, and impacted her daughters.  The best part though, it didn’t feel like I sat reading for nearly four hours (I did move from place to place, but it was mostly reading and it was GLORIOUS) because the writing was gorgeous, the pacing was fantastic, and the plot was so engaging.  I’m giving Our Last Days in Barcelona 4.5 stars and noting the intention of consuming Cleeton’s back list as soon as the holds situation allows (which doesn’t look like soon, unfortunately).  I’m going to round down not up on Goodreads because I don’t see myself rereading this title, even though I did thoroughly enjoy it and highly recommend it if it sounds like something you’d enjoy!

What’s the last book that you stayed up well past bedtime to finish?

~Nikki  

Chanel Cleeton is without a doubt magical. I don’t know how any woman could keep up with being an attorney with a bachelors in International Relations and a master’s degree in Global Politics while also writing at least one book a year since 2014! Pure Sorcery I tell you! But, I am entranced by her magic and I will continue reading her backlist as quickly as possible. Hopefully before The Cuban Heiress is due out in May of 2023! And, yes I DID absolutely recommend it to the library already!

Nikki already mentioned many of the feelings that I had wanted to discuss after reading Our Last Days in Barcelona, namely the expectations of women from every – stinking – where you can imagine. I especially wanted to discuss inherited expectations from family which most women then place upon themselves internally. Why is it that we find ourselves reading about women doing the hard inner work of knowing themselves? I know the external stimulating factors of internal questioning is usually different for every character (read: human), but that internal struggle is to me what allows us to empathize with any character, to find pieces of ourselves contained on the page.

I don’t have to look hard for this connection between Isabel in 1964 and her mother Alicia in 1937, because the climax of the book centers around Guernica, which hits right at the 80% sweet spot. I’m not going to give you spoilers about what actually happens in the book, but if you know anything about the Pablo Picasso mural of the same name, he painted it for the 1937 Paris International Exposition. Picasso was commissioned to paint a mural for the Exposition by the Spanish Republican government. Once he truly knew the horrors Nazi aerial bombs did to the town and people of Guernica on April 26, 1937 at the request of Francisco Franco’s Spanish Nationalist party, Picasso changed his previous plan for the mural to oppose the Nationalist Party’s aims in Spain and the horrors of war in general. Guernica is considered Picasso’s most well-known work and perhaps the most powerful anti-war painting in history. The monochromatic, gray, black, and white 11 foot tall 25 foot long mural is currently hanging in the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, but in 1964 it was housed at the MoMa in New York. As part of his estate, Picasso’s will dictated that Guernica must be returned to Spanish soil once the Spanish people were in control of their own destiny and a republican government was in control once again. [In 1978, Spain ratified a new constitution instituting a democratic constitutional monarchy, and after much negotiation, Guernica was returned to Spain in 1981.] Bringing it back to Our Last Days in Barcelona in the prologue, when we meet Isabel on the eve of her wedding in Palm Beach, she is painting a picture of home, of Cuba. 

I’m so glad that I consumed this double 4.5 star read by Chanel Cleeton. Our Last Days in Barcelona transports the reader into the minds and hearts of the Perez women, showing us how newsworthy events on a global scale can affect families for generations afterward – specifically with inherited, familial expectations. I am also unlikely to re-read this title, as I truly need to get going on Cleeton’s backlist, but I would consider it for a bookish discussion, especially if someone hosts a party with the publisher provided Book Club Kit! [Nikki here: if you’re interested, let us know in the comments or DMs. I’m confident we could be convinced to reread, for the sake of Virtual Book Club!]

~Ashley

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