The following post includes affiliate links. More details here.  As you’re doing your Amazon shopping, we’d be ever so grateful if you’d use our affiliate link to do so as it helps pay the bills around here!

TL/DR: I finished the title in 25 hours.  Cleeton is a master, and her season pass is confirmed.  The Cuban Heiress has great potential for your book club!

Buckle up darling readers, because this is going to be an adventure of a review à la how to talk about this book without revealing part of the mystery.  The Cuban Heiress by Chanel Cleeton opens as a luxury cruise is embarking in New York in the 1930s. The story focuses on an actress secretly playing the part of an heiress who’s engaged to a rich socialite and a woman who’s supposed to be dead, but clearly isn’t.  While sailing towards Cuba, our heiress discovers a jewel thief, the not dead (as opposed to undead – this is straight historical fiction) woman pursues revenge.  I want to say SO much more about these three, and a couple more of the supporting cast, but I’m afraid to ruin the fun!

As you may have guessed by my completing The Cuban Heiress in just over a day, this novel is a very fun hang!  It’s very plot driven, and as we go along, we learn so much about our leading ladies via flashbacks.  I don’t think it’s precisely a mystery, but there definitely is an air of mystery about how our fake heiress came to be playing this part, what happened to our not dead woman to get her here, and how in the world is this all going to shake down on a luxury cruise!  I had a great time figuring out some of these questions as the action went along, and there were twists and turns I wasn’t expecting which made the chaos so much more fun (especially the author’s notes where Cleeton tells us what’s fact and what’s fiction).  

Here’s some how the sauce is made for my star ratings – I’m giving The Cuban Heiress 4.5 stars and rounding down.  While I stand by Cleeton’s season pass and gorgeous, engaging, and so picturesque, this content isn’t living rent free in my head and I’m not likely to reread this, and those are two key pieces of a 5 star review from me.  Let this be a reminder, a four star review from us is a solid, emphatic recommendation, but not a likely contender for favorite of the year.  

What’s a book that surprised you with how fun it was to read consume?

~Nikki 

Darling Readers, I want to remind you that Heart.Wants.Books. Has reviewed two other Chanel Cleeton titles: The Last Train to Key West and Our Last Days in Barcelona. We have three more titles in her historical fiction titles with Cuban women as the protagonists. Cleeton also has nine romance novels and one thriller listed on her website. And truly, the only reason we haven’t read her entire backlist is because there are so many books and so little time. Some day, at some time, I’ll get to the rest of her titles.

But for now, we need to discuss The Cuban Heiress. And, similar to Nikki, I read today’s title in one day, according to Goodreads. I didn’t read on my Kindle the day before I read the entirety of this title, according to Kindle Insights, and I am going to trust the technology to know how often I read. I have all the faith that the algorithms can keep track and suggest more interesting things for me to consume. Remember that your reading life is not a competition with anyone except yourself (if you so choose to make it into one) and it’s sole purpose is to bring you joy. So I’m not saying that I liked this book more than Nikki did, or that I’m a faster reader (I’m not) I am saying that I had way more time on Sunday to sit my butt in the big chair and knock out this entire 300 page novel. It was engrossing, but at times a little predictable for me when it came to the mystery and murder. I also was mentally distracted by the constant question of “where does the money come from?” How are these women funding their shenanigans? That’s all I want to know. Also, can I figure out how to fund my own shenanigans on luxury cruise lines, that would be excellent.

Even though I only have four highlights in the entire book, each of them are poignant for specific reasons. The tale of the SS Morro Castle and all the research Cleeton undertook to write the story is a rabbit hole I will go no farther down except to share: Herbert Saffir, an actual survivor of the tragedy on the Morro Castle, would go on to help develop the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale for classifying hurricanes. I wonder if his experience on that trip at seventeen years old changed his personal trajectory so much that his work for the United Nations in the 1970’s studying low-cost housing in hurricane prone areas  is now why we have a five category scale to describe the possible destructive power of these weather events. What an interesting branch of the rabbit warren I went down when I should be telling you all about how I, too, will be giving The Cuban Heiress a four star review. It was a perfect read for a perfectly stormy Sunday at home.

~Ashley

PLEASE SUPPORT US WHEN YOU SHOP BY FIRST CLICKING ON THE IMAGES BELOW: