I’m having trouble putting words to my thoughts right now, and the tears streaming down my face don’t help, but that was fantastic. Not at all what I was expecting when I started, yet everything I wanted to read. And then some.

If I had to describe this in one word it would be “Unputdownable”.

Elisa and Marisol’s timelines weave together a seamless glimpse into the past—a history we don’t get in our American textbooks—with present day in a heart-achingly romantic, and emotionally engulfing story of love, loss, family, and what it really means to be free.

This reads like a love letter to Cuba, it’s beautiful scenery, it’s people, and it’s complicated history.

Read it.

really good and entertaining book. i loved the detail given to the city and the different parts of the country. i actually have several friends/family who have visited Cuba recently and i feel like i understand more of Havana from reading the book than I did from pouring over their photos (which I also did).
I liked the imagery and the thoughts of the 2 different "types" of Cubans -- those who fled and those who stayed though they both love Cuba so much. Also the history in the book is good for someone like me who has no ties to Cuba and is pretty much a blank slate.

I received an advanced review copy of this book from The Great Thoughts Ninja Review Team. All opinions are my own.

I was swept away from the first page of this incredible story! Next Year in Havana tells the story of a family in exile, of a people who are torn between country and family, between freedom and oppression, between hope and despair. Every page of this book is filled with passion...whether it is the passion between lovers, or the passion one has for their country...I could feel the passion and love deep inside me. There is so much to love about this book. The characters are so richly-layered, so unique, and they were written about in such a way that I felt their emotions, their loves, their passions, as if they were my own. Cuba is such an integral part of this book, from the days of the revolution that put Castro into power, to present-day Cuba which is still striving for freedom and equality. The author wrote so eloquently about this country, that I felt as if I were there, walking along its beautiful beaches, through the noisy, colorful streets of Havana. This novel is a wonderful blend of historical facts and fiction, educating readers through a passionate, compelling, heartfelt story.

Elisa's family is part of the wealthy regime in Cuba but the world is changing and Elisa and her sister's are starting to think about their country. When Elisa sneaks out with her sister's to a party of revolutionaries things don't follow a plan. Flash forward to Elisa's granddaughter Marisol's return to Cuba. How much has changed? How much is the same? And what family history will Marisol discover? A story of family, home, and Cuba.

Next Year in Havana by Chanel Cleeton

I hesitated in requesting to review this book and one of the main reasons I did request was because that stunning cover just drew me right in and I had a feeling I might kick myself if I missed on the opportunity. I hesitated because I wasn't sure if it's the kind of book that would normally appeal to me: I like RomComs, the light and fluffy books that, while they do have substance, leave me feeling happy and sporting a smile and ready to move on to the next book. Next Year in Havana is neither light nor fluffy however, it gripped me from the very first page and it will stay with me long after the last page was turned.

Cleeton has written a superb synopsis and I won't insult her by rehashing that for you. I felt that Next Year in Havana was like reading two love stories, Marisol and her recently deceased grandmother, Elisa's. It's written so beautifully, so heartbreakingly, so visceral and raw that it consumed me to the last page and beyond. It entails the love between men and women, siblings, parents, friends. It encompassed love, loss, and betrayal and the beautiful writing had me reduced to tears.

I've never really given any thought to Cuba and how it's arrived at its present state but now I feel compelled to read about the revolution and learn everything I can - Cleeton's writing is just that good: captivating, engaging, gripping. This book is now a top favorite of mine and after that twist and excerpt, I cannot wait for the next. Next Year in Havana can absolutely be read as a standalone. I don't hesitate to recommend this to anyone who'll listen to me.

*arc received from publisher via NetGalley in exchange for honest review.

**Reviewed by Melinda for Joandisalovebooks Blog.

Marisol Ferrera travels to Cuba to spread her grandma's (Elisha Perez) ashes and to experience the country behind her grandma's magical tales of Havana in the 1950s. Her grandmother comes from a grandiose sugar family that once wielded power and extravagant wealth in Havana's elite society. Once Marisol arrives, her grandma's childhood best friend gives her an old cigar box filled with mementos from her grandmother's past. The woman that Marisol believed she knew as her surrogate mother was a completely different person. Marisol goes on a quest to figure out who her grandmother was while also finding herself in the process.

I stayed up all night reading this book because I could not put it down. The writing was beautiful, fluid, and transports the reader to another age and time before and after Castro took power in Cuba in 1959. The mirroring of Marisol and her grandmother Elisha throughout their journal in different periods was stunning. I really wish the book would have kept going! My attention started to wane with the final third of the book due to a plot twist that did not seen fathomable. Regardless, this read is perfect for an escape to 1950s Cuba and takes the reader along a journey of develing into Perez/Ferrera family secrets.

It has been a very long time since a book has made me think. Even longer since I’ve been able to relate to a story or it’s characters. 'Next Year In Havana' is the book that brought this all back for me.

This story is told in dual points of view by our two leading female protagonists. We have nineteen year old Elisa Perez living in 1950s Cuba and then her granddaughter thirty one year old Marisol Ferrera who is visiting modern day Cuba for the first time. While both women live in different time periods, their stories bear striking similarities. They follow the same themes: Love, family, politics and, most of all - hope.

I genuinely enjoyed the story. I loved the plot, the mystery surrounding Elisa’s romance with the revolutionary Pablo. The uncertainty of a romance between Luis and Marisol. So many questions and doubts leaving you to keep turning the pages to find out more. And in the end you get some surprises and maybe even a little suspense on the way that leave you on the edge of your seat. The characters were intriguing. You will find yourself drawn to more than one and wanting to know more about them. I especially loved that Havana, the city, and Cuba, the country, were a character all on their own. The way everything was described, I could easily imagine myself standing right there with the characters experiencing it all with them. The history of the country also plays a big part in both Elisa and Marisol's journeys. You definitely will learn a lot about how Cuba came to be the way it is today.

Reading this book was a treat for me on a personal level. I, like Marisol, am Cuban American myself. My grandparents also came to the United States from Cuba years ago seeking a better future than what they were being offered. So reading the Perez families' experience and reading all about what Marisol saw and heard in Cuba definitely resonated with me. Because I’ve seen the same stuff all the times I’ve visited the country. I’ve heard the same stories from family members that lived in Cuba before and after the revolution happened. And then reading about her family's customs or the ones of the people she met in the country reminded me so much of my own family. So I can relate on a personal level to a lot of things and in particular with Marisol as a person. Those times when you don’t feel fully Cuban because you weren’t born there or haven’t struggled like the people who remained. Or those feelings of horror, disbelief, and helplessness you go through when you realize how the freedom we take for granted here in the US is denied to your fellow Cubans. For these reasons alone, the story touched me in ways I didn’t expect at all.

I really have to give big kudos to the author. This was my first time reading her work and it certainly won't be my last. She did such a fantastic job with depicting how Cuba is today. It was spot on and I believe that non Cuban readers will have a better understanding of the country and it’s people after reading this. I didn’t expect this book to be as important as it ended up being, but it truly is a must read. In the end, Marisol hopes the articles she will write after her experiences in Cuba will help change come to the country. I feel like this book just might do that itself. Or at least that’s what I hope.

Ojalá.

Told in alternating time periods of 1958 Cuba and modern day Cuba, we follow the stories of Elisa and her granddaughter Marisol. Both stories will spark your interest in this novel of family, hope, love and political upheaval. The promises made to end the dictatorship of Batista turn into the broken promises of the Castro regime, as it is the Cuban people who suffer through these times of suspicion and unrest. I loved this novel, learning much about the culture of Cubans and Cuban Americans as it relates to their history and struggles, while the two love stories are powerful. Highly recommend.

I received an advanced review copy of this book from The Great Ninja Review Team. All opinions are my own. If you're lucky once in a while you will come across a book that will affect you deeply. This book did it for me. As the daughter of a Cuban father I was excited to see her portrayal of Cuba and she didn't disappoint. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the stories my aunt told me were expressed in the book. It's a beautiful story. It's a love story, a historical lesson and a view of Cuba we rarely get to see. I have a very strong feeling this is going to be a huge book in 2018 and I really look forward to more books from this author.

Every once in a while I start a book and from page one I am completely enamored with the every aspect of the book - the plot, the characters, the setting, and the relationships. Next Year in Havana is this type of book; as I read, I was constantly ruminating about how fabulous the book was. I love that feeling, and to me, it is the sign of an exceptionally good book.

Next Year in Havana is told in a dual timeline format, alternating between the late 1950’s and present day. Both story lines are equally compelling, and Chanel Cleeton artfully incorporates both the beauty and history of Cuba into her tale about courage in the face of family and loss. Cleeton’s family fled Cuba in 1967, and the personal connection and love she feels for the country are reflected in her tale. Cuba is a fascinating place to me, and stories set there always appeal to me. Next Year in Havana stands out because the author effectively integrates a significant amount of Cuban history while crafting a beautiful tale of family, love, and enduring relationships. I had never really understood the schism between those who left Cuba after Fidel Castro came into power versus those that remained. Without taking sides, Cleeton engenders sympathy for both groups and the difficult choices that those individuals had to make when choosing which path to take.

I was curious about the title of the book when I began reading and thankfully she explains it: “As exiles, … hope is embedded in the very essence of our soul. ‘Next Year in Havana. It’s the toast we never stop saying, because the dream of it never comes true.’ ” What a beautiful tribute to Cuba that decades later those exiled still hope year after year that they can one day return, and how incredibly sad that it has still not come to pass.

Sadly, I think it is easy for Americans to forget how lucky we are to live in a country where freedom is taken for granted. Reading about present day Cuba is scary: internet and cell phone coverage is scarce, the government controls what information is disseminated, food shortages are common, and retribution for speaking out can be punishable by death. The reminder is helpful in our current political environment; freedom and equality are worth protecting, and it is important to speak out against those attempting to infringe on those rights.

Next Year in Havana is spectacular. I loved the entire book and was thrilled with the small surprise at the end. I had an inkling that the surprise might be coming and was glad when it worked out that way. I struggled a bit with the resolution of the present day story line but am not sure that there was any other way for it to end; it certainly did not impact my view of the book. The cover of Next Year in Havana deserves to be mentioned also; it is simply stunning and fits the book beautifully. Thanks to Berkley Publishing and BookBrowse for the chance to read this ARC. All opinions are my own.

Told from the point of Marisol in current times and Elisa in 1960's Cuba. When Marisol's grandma dies she sends her to Cuba to bury her ashes. As she compares the Cuba her grandma told her about with modern Cuba, she also uncovers secrets from her family's history. Marisol finds herself running from the country she loves but cannot safely stay.

The Cuban revolution and this transitory time of change are wholly unfamiliar to me, but ‘Next Year in Havana’ brings it all to life through broad, sweeping strokes that tell parallel stories of a woman’s journey out of Cuba and her granddaughter’s journey back there nearly 60 years later.

Chanel Cleeton’s precise yet lyrical prose rolls through constant reiterations of the resilience of memory and all the versions of Cuba that emerge through every character’s eyes. Marisol Ferrera and Elisa Perez’s fervent (and doomed) love affairs might be wrapped up in the city’s fading glory and the wire-tight tension of impending upheaval, yet these star-crossed lovers seem merely a metaphor for the Cuban individual’s love unending love affair with his/her country—it’s just how effortlessly their romances have been woven into the backdrop of revolution, reform and change.

It’s that curious strain of hope that can’t ever die—and perhaps the eternal yearning for something that they can’t have—which seems to be the poignant and loudest message that Cleeton brings across in this enthralling read. Like in many stories of revolution, the academics and thinkers (and the women who stay hidden in the shadows) matter—it’s brain over brawn, passion over looks—and they bear the burden of carrying the mantles of heroes and or the swords of villains. Sometimes both. Marisol’s and Elisa’s voices are as much tethered to their love of their country as they are tied to their love for their revolutionary men, but it’s also the selfsame passion and emotion that Pablo and Luis carry in their intellectual rhetoric that had me mesmerised from start to finish.

‘Next Year in Havana’ isn’t a book that lets bygones be bygones, after all. Yet the story’s power lies not quite in the galvanising force of political dialogue or the hard, dirty work of nonviolent change but in loss, tragedy and the love that came incidentally—the untold stories that were left by the wayside because bigger things eclipsed these. So when Cleeton told them, I found myself sitting on the edge of my seat, swooning. And I might have also shed a tear or two.

While the story is not without some interest, I found myself wandering away from it all too often. Perhaps it’s the writing style, which seems a bit simplistic, or perhaps it’s just that this book is not a good match for me. I think there’s more there than I found and I hope that other readers are more successful m

This is the story of Elisa Perez, wealthy daughter of a Cuban sugar planter in the last days before Castro’s revolution, and her granddaughter, Marisol, in modern-day Florida. Elisa has always lived a life of privilege and never been interested in the rumblings of revolution in 1950’s Havana, but when she meets a young revolutionary, she finds herself falling in love. because of the political tides, their love affair is doomed from the beginning and Elisa and her family are forced to flee their home for Miami. Marisol grew up with her grandmother’s stories of Cuba, now that Elisa has passed away, Marisol will make her first trip to the island she’s heard so much about. She’s been charged with scattering her grandmother’s ashes over the homeland Elisa always planned to return to. While in Havana, Marisol meets her grandmother’s childhood friend and discovers the truth about Elisa’s true love. I really enjoyed the descriptions of Cuba, its sights, sounds and smells. My father also loved Cuba and spoke fondly of his trips there before the country was closed to Americans. Readers will learn a lot about the history of the country, while enjoying a trip back in time