When We Left Cuba by Chanel Cleeton releases April 9, 2019. Thanks to Netgalley and Penguin Random House for the advanced copy. I really enjoyed Next Year In Havana by Chanel Cleeton and was thrilled to read her new book. In this story, Beatriz Perez, is trying to help Cuba by eliminating Fidel Castro. She begins her journey as a spy for the CIA and this added excitement to the storyline. The story is told between the past in the 1960’s and in the present. Her writing style is beautiful and I enjoyed learning more about Cuba’s history. There is also romance and family drama in this historical fiction book.

Chanel Cleeton is back with an adventurous romance about a woman who leaves Cuba with her family and falls in love with an American politician. Oh, and she also works for the CIA to attempt to seduce Fidel Castro. Beatriz was a bad ass and I thoroughly enjoyed her fictional story.

When We Left Cuba is the highly anticipated follow up to one of the top reads of 2017 - Last Year in Havana. The story follows Beatriz as her family has moved to Florida following their exile from Cuba. Desperate to avenge her twin brother’s death she becomes involved with the CIA, while also becoming involved with some romantic scandal.
When We Left Cuba is another 5 star read that you won’t want to put down. Romance, danger, intrigue, betrayal, this book has it all.

If you loved Next Year in Havana, you will love When We Left Cuba! This was such an enthralling book! I will be hand-selling this book like crazy!

Wow! I fell in love with the Perez family in Next Year in Havana but, Beatriz’s story in When We Left Cuba was AMAZING!

History is not my thing but Chanel Cleeton’s storytelling ability made me want to know more about the Cuban Missle Crisis and Fidel Castro.

The love story and struggle of finding ones own independence and respect outside of the normal female roles of society made this story timely.

When We Left Cuba is easily 4.5/5 ⭐️‘S and is a MUST read in Spring 2019!! Be sure to preorder this gem of a book.

I was so excited to see to see another book about the Perez sisters and this book did not disappoint. Although this a follow up to Next Year in Havana, you do not need to read it (but why wouldn't you, it was so good) to understand this book. Beatriz Perez does not feel at home in Florida society life, her heart is still back in her home country of Cuba. She yearns to avenge the death of her twin brother by Fidel Castro's regime and will risk her life for this revenge. Even the two men who love her cannot fully win her heart which was left in Cuba when her brother died. When the CIA asks her to help put a stop to Fidel, how can she resist?

I received this book as an egalley in exchange for a review.

When We Left Cuba was an amazing read. If you enjoyed Next Year in Havana as much as I did this book is a must-read. It’s the story of Beatriz, sister of Elisa and aunt of Marisol. She’s a larger than life figure with an exciting life, lived on her own terms. We learn more about Cuban history and US/Cuban relations. I want to visit Cuba more than ever.

Last year I read Next Year in Havana and loved everything about it. Because of that, I had high expectations for When We Left Cuba, its sequel. While I did enjoy this story, I didn’t connect with this protagonist as well as I did with the one in the previous book.

Beatriz is a strong character with a thirst for revenge and a risky affair clouding her mind. I suppose the hostility she harbored wouldn’t allow me to sympathize with her the way I had with her younger sister (in the previous book) but there were page-turning moments just the same.

With all that said, I enjoyed this story. I learned so much about the revolution of Cuba and the country’s politics and unique intricacies. It was nice to revisit the setting and characters, and I’ll most certainly seek out this author’s next book.

I received a complimentary ARC of this book from NetGalley.

I adored the first book in this series and loved the way it was written about a different sister. I feel as if I lived through the revolution when I read these books. I love the character development and urge you to read this. Your patrons will thank you for recommending this beautiful love story.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an e-arc of When We Left Cuba - this is no way influences my review.

When We Left Cuba is a companion novel to Cleeton's Last Year in Havana - centered on the same family, but set predominately around the time of The Bay of Pigs (with a light dash of 2016), and focused entirely on Beatriz Perez. Beatriz is full of anger about the revolution in Cuba - not just because of her family's diminished lifestyle, or the death of her brother - she loves her country deeply and does not feel that Fidel Castro and his revolutionaries have Cuba's best interests at heart.
She is recruited into the CIA, recommended by her brother's friend Eduardo, and the story centers on their largely separate attempts to rid Cuba of Castro. A secondary plot within the novel is Beatriz's ill-advised affair with a highly ranking senator. Beatriz attempts to balance her love for Cuba with her love of a man who works for a country that views Cuba as little more than a pawn in the Cold War.

There are a number of excellent scenes in this novel, but I was unable to connect to Beatriz as a character - the writing felt somehow distant from her, even though it was a first person POV through her eyes. I felt that her anger clouded her common sense - leaping wildly from one plan to another without concern for her safety or if her handlers had really put any thought into the plan. I understand overwhelming anger, but to sustain it for so long, at the expense of everything for Beatriz, made it less and less believable/relatable.

When We Left Cuba remains an interesting story, as I've rarely read anything about Cuba it was a learning experience, I just wish I could've connected more to the characters.

‘When we left Cuba’ isn’t quite a sequel to Chanel Cleeton’s much-loved ’Next Year in Havana’, the latter of which I do consider one of my best reads of the year. Still, it’s a book that stands on its own feet even if it’s less sweeping than its predecessor. Still, ‘When we left Cuba’ is a compellingly written story of the oldest Perez sister who struts her way through the pages, armed with the thirst for revenge as she somehow moseys her way into the clutches of the CIA while tangling with a senator whose a player in politics and in every sense of the word.

Within the fodder material of the fabled and many attempts of the CIA to assassinate Fidel Castro is where Cleeton posits Beatriz Perez after her escape from Cuba, navigating the thorny issues of policy and politics of the time. Bold, hot-headed and reckless, Beatriz carves a path for herself that’s as treacherous as you’d expect, resulting in having her loyalties sorely tested as her decisions change the course of her life.

Cleeton writes in favour of long, descriptive passages of place and emotion; the pace is slower as a result, the plot a little more convoluted. The romance isn’t quite the focus here; rather, Beatriz herself is the star of the show, front and centre. Her long, longstanding affair with a powerful senator is carried out amidst society’s expectations and the uncertain political climate, a subplot that runs alongside her involvement with the CIA.

I’ll admit though, that it is harder to be singularly or emotionally invested in Beatriz completely as I was in Cleeton’s first book about Elisa and her granddaughter. Undoubtedly, Beatriz is a colourful character who stands out sharply—sometimes too painfully sharply like a woman cut from a different cloth—not just by means of her birth but also her life experiences, but ultimately, she’s still a protagonist whose story I read about from a distance as she made her own small stamp on history, for better or worse.

Cleeton’s impactful writing carries it all here, despite the odd hollowness I felt about Beatriz by the end. It’s what took me through the politics, the lies, the dirty games and the passing of time within the pages after all and it’s what keeps me coming back.