What an incredible journey through time! The life of. Violeta is the highest of highs and the lowest of lows with everything in between! The history woven into this beautiful story was truly eye opening for this American reader. I highly recommend this book and thank #netgalley for the requested ARC.

This book was a joy to read and I was sorry when it was over. Allende's wonderful storytelling captured me from the start.

I love Isabel Allende. I learn so much history from her stuff. She writes rich, complex characters. Her writing is always descriptive. She puts you in the time and place with no trouble. Her women are so strong and smart and way ahead of their time. Violeta is one of them. From her relationships with her family to her husband, Fabian, and Julian, the father of her children, she shows strength. I did not like the Roy Cooper angle. Kind of felt thrown in. This book was wonderful and made me cry many times.

At 100 years old, Violeta documents her life in a letter to her grandson. It was quite a tumultuous life, filled with scandal, political intrigue, abuse, family drama, wars...there was never a dull moment. This is one of my favorite Allende books because there were so many surprises and I learned a little history along the way.

Thanks to NetGalley for the digital reviewer copy in exchange for an honest review.

I really loved the first half and read it very quickly. The second half did not catch me like the first half. I really lived the characters and the stores. Will definitely recommend it to others. I love Allende’s works and the worlds she creates.

I must admit that I am big fan of Isabel Allende, and Violeta does not disappoint. You quickly get swept into another world with different customs and politics, and romance between unlikely characters. Violeta is a strong woman who survives through many challenges, learning but not disillusioned. I love how the author just sort of chatters on as if a good friend was telling you a story, offhandedly throwing in juicy bits or teasing that she’ll get back to some aspect later.
I am so late reading a nonfiction for my book club…. But I can’t put this one down!

Thank you to Net Galley and Ballentine Books for providing me an advanced reader’s copy of the English version of an incredible new book by acclaimed novelist Isabel Allende.

Allende tells her story in the form of a letter about her 100-year life to someone she loves above all others, recounting times of devastating heartbreak and passionate affairs, poverty and wealth, terrible loss and immense joy. Her life is shaped by some of the most important events of history: the fight for women’s rights, the rise and fall of tyrants, and ultimately not one, but two pandemics.

Violeta comes into the world on a stormy day in 1920, the first girl in a family with five sons. From the start, her life is marked by extraordinary events, for the ripples of the Great War are still being felt, even as the Spanish flu arrives on the shores of her South American homeland almost at the moment of her birth.

The family came through that crisis unscathed, only to face new ones as the Great Depression transforms the genteel city life she has known. Her family loses everything and is forced to retreat to a wild and beautiful but remote part of the country. There, she comes of age, and she marries her first suitor.

She leaves a loveless marriage as a young woman, found great passion and late in life found the true love of her life. She endured trials and tribulations all through her life, and she never wavered. She was successful in international business, but that was not the driving factor in her life. With all the ups and downs throughout her life, she was able to overcome each with grace and good humor. and their impacts on her characters.

Allende’s latest book is another example of her gift of epic storytelling. This gorgeous novel may be my favorite Allende epic of all time.

This beautiful work of art spans 100 year life of our beautiful Violeta. The words flow eloquently and the story mesmerizing. Violeta spends her life in South America and has many personal relationships and experiences throughout her long life.
Enjoy this beautifully written book.

I absolutely loved this new novel by Isabel Allende……..it might be my favorite of hers so far. The character development was excellent along with an interesting story, it made for a compelling reading and a book that was hard to put down.

Thank you Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. I just could not get into this book. I wanted to. I really wanted to. I gave up about 1/5 of the way in. Hopefully, I can come back to it in the future and love it just as much as I see everyone else is.

Violeta is the extraordinary tale of a woman who lives through the major events of the 20th century in South America. Told through the artistry of Isabel Allende, the reader can see the city, the rural beauty of her homeland as well as the upheavals of war, the Spanish Flu, the Great Depression, not to mention the major events of Violeta's life. All is told with the sensitivity of a woman who has weathered everything life has thrown at her.

Such a pleasure to read, definitely hard to put down. My compliments to the author!

This is one woman’s story, written to her grandson. Violeta Del Valle has lived one hundred years, from the year of the Spanish Flu pandemic, to the current age of the Coronavirus. This is not just her history, but also a hundred years of her country’s history, as it impacted her and her family. Her home is a country in South America, but not otherwise specified.

As a little girl, Violeta is raised in an affluent family, but soon, the convergence of The Great Depression and her father’s business practices equal disaster for her family. This is the first upheaval in her eventful life. She will learn to live and survive in multiple ways and face many challenges. Some of these challenges will be strictly personal, while the most dangerous will involve the political landscape in her country.

This narrative made me very thankful to have grown up in a country where attention to politics seems to be optional. That is, we in The United States have never woken up to find that all of our individual rights have been suddenly and indefinitely surrendered, or that the army is arresting anyone with certain beliefs. Violeta lived through such a time, and as a result, she lost people she loved. People’s lives were changed forever.

Violeta’s life was a roller coaster. She lived through extreme stress and trauma, but she also had some exhilarating highs. She found passion as a young woman, then love as an older woman. In the end, she found purpose and a way to be here for those who needed her, always.

Violeta is beautifully written, and I enjoyed it immensely. The way Violeta continually reinvents herself, using her experience and all that she has learned in life to branch out and help others, is an inspiration. And she is certainly proud of her grandson, who has had his own long road of discoveries.

I’ve left out the other characters in Violeta’s life, who are many and most intriguing, but I’ll leave that for you to find out. You won’t regret it.

Many thanks to Random House and Netgalley for this wonderful experience!

I received the ARC of Violeta from NetGalley

Violeta is the endearing saga of the 100 year life of Violeta Del Valle, as recounted to her grandson Camilo, who became a priest.

At first we meet Violeta, she is the last born child, and only girl, in a wealthy Chilean family in the middle of the Spanish Flu epidemic. Pampered, and coddled, Violeta had her extended family wrapped around her little finger, until her Irish nanny, Miss Taylor arrived on the scene! The nanny was to play an evolving role in Violeta’s life.

I read this book in “chunks” because I wanted to savor every chapter….every adventure in Violeta’s life. An early tragedy presented the family with difficult choices. Family loyalty, Resilience, Passion, Loss and Joy are woven throughout this rich tale under the backdrop of a tumultuous time in the history of Chile.

I especially enjoyed, what I believe to be, Allende’s finest work. As an expat living in South America, I recognized so much of the Domestic Violence, Oppression, Class Distinctions and Culture that still exist in many parts of the region today. Her life’s adventures took her to live among the Indigenous(please don’t call them Indians), to the US, and back to Chile, time and time again. The ancillary characters, of which there are many, are not only colorful, but memorable.

The word for Violeta that comes to mind is “spitfire”. What carried Violeta through her entire life was her “joie de vivre”. She exited a loveless marriage, found great passion with a “scoundrel’, and later found her soulmate. She endured losses all along the way, but her fortitude never wavered. But, in the midst of it all, was a women who was “driven”…in business, in her family and in society. Violeta wanted wonderful things for her country and for all those close to her. With her wry sense of humor, her sense of excitement in all things wonderful, as well as her ability to overcome each, and every, adverse event, I fell in love with her character.

Though I think the “weakest” part of the book, was the ending, this was a 5 Star read for me….and I dole those out sparingly!!

I thank NetGalley and Ballentine Books for providing me an advanced reader’s copy of the English version of a wondrous new book by acclaimed Spanish novelist Isabel Allende. The book is called Violeta and is set to be published January 25, 2022. I have read and enjoyed several of Isabel Allende’s previous books, and this one proved no exception.

The book consists entirely of a letter from a dying grandmother, the eponymous Violeta, to her most beloved grandson whom she raised from infancy. In it she reveals everything that she experienced during her 100 years on earth, beginning with her birth in South America during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1920 and ending with her death during the coronavirus epidemic of 2020. She details her marriages and her great loves and disappointments, the births and lives of her children, and the deaths of family members and quasi-family members. She lived through the Great Depression and through democracies and dictatorships.

Allende’s prose is beautiful as she describes the lives of Violeta and her family and the landscapes of the places she lived and the people she loved. Violeta is an epic saga well worth reading.

I was lucky enough to receive an advance copy for free of this book via Netgalley and from Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Ballantine Books.

This was a gooood story! This book begins and ends with a pandemic (the Spanish Flu and COVID), one hundred years apart, the lifespan of Violeta, our main character. Violeta is writing a letter to someone introduced much later in the book, which helps to explain the format of the story.

She begins her life as a spoilt younger daughter of a wealthy family growing up in South America (I don't believe we learn the name of the actual country where she is from). As a young teen during the Great Depression, her family is impacted in a major way, and the flee their home and move to a remote town that Violeta's nanny and partner have recommended.

From here, we get the story of how she grew up in a place that was much less confined, and where close relationships were really important. She is exposed to people with differing viewpoints that were quite radical for the time. Members of her family take different positions on war, feminism, political stances, and more, told in a way that never lectures, only exposes us to how she views these new points of view. It's the story of a person's life, how they grow, change, learn more, and become settled with who they are. She weathers tragedy, success, love, and so much of life, that really is just pieces of what makes up a life, but told to one other person through one viewpoint is so compelling. The characters in Violeta's life are so vivid and interesting.

I loved that the book is told from only Violeta's perspective. This demonstrates blind spots in how she sees the world, and clearly misses world events and how they impact others, but this is quite normal for us all. I really enjoy when authors do this, and I don't see it all that often.

This was a really great story. I had a hard time putting it down; I wanted to know what was happening to Violeta and the people in her family. Really excellent read. I feel lucky that I was able to read this book already.

Isabel Allende is one of my favorite authors and in this book, she didn’t disappoint. The story of Violeta was written as a letter to Camilo. It is about overcoming struggles through the experience of the Del Valle family starting with the Spanish flu and continuing through bankruptcy, marriage, separation, and many other challenges, concluding in 2020. The strength of Violeta and her family in copy through all the difficulties is showcased beautifully.

Violetta is an epic saga of one woman’s life in Argentina spanning 100 years from the flu pandemic to the covid pandemic. The story is a letter to her grandson, Camillo. I enjoyed her stories about her life beginning with her birth. She was the first girl with 5 older brothers. Isabel Allende always does a great job with the lifelong story of a character in her books. She describes her family, relationships and journey through life’s ups and downs. I liked that she included the political and cultural history as well.
Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC and opportunity to review this book.

Violetta is a women who was born in 1920 and relives the hundred years of her live in letter form. All through the book you have no idea why or to whom she is writing this. She is telling this story to someone she loves very much.

Violetta was born into a family of 5 brothers. Her family comes through the Spanish flu and Great War unscathed. But when the depression hits, they loose all and are forced to move to a remote part of the country. There Violetta comes of age and learns a great deal about life. She reveals all her affairs, her times of poverty and wealth, her good times as well as bad and her terrible losses. She lived through the rise and fall of tyrants and through 2 pandemics.

For me the story started out very slow. It was tough getting through the first part of her life and I was ready to put it down. But from the time the family moved to the farm in the remote part of their country, the story picked up considerably. I didn’t want to put it down. I wanted to know what happened in her life and especially wanted to know her relationship to the recipient of the letter.

Thank you Net Galley for giving me the opportunity to read another of Isabel’s works. I have liked many of her others.

I am a long-time fan of Isabel Allende's writing. In particular, she has a gift for character creation and development and that is true for Violeta. Like in all her other novels, every character introduced in Violeta is meaningful to the story. The back-stories and descriptions of their personality are so rich and detailed that you feel as if you know the people who make up the story. And country is always an important character in Allende's novels. Although she never specifies in which South American country this story takes place, it is obvious the tale occurs in Chile. Allende is expert at depicting the effect of economic, social, political, religious turmoils on the individuals and families central to her book. In that way, in Violeta, I received a comprehensive overview of 20th century Chilean life of which I had previously known little. (It is shameful South American history is given short shrift in the US education system given the heavy hand of the US in Latin American affairs.) Overall, this novel is a very worthwhile and entertaining read that fans of Allende's work will enjoy.

I wish to thank NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine Books for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

How have I not read from this author sooner? A couple of her books are on my 'to-read' list and I listened to Allende interviewed by the great, Alan Alda. Many good intentions to dig into her books, but it took this early release given to me for me to jump in. And it was an exceptional read. Following the 100 year span of Violeta's life (pandemic to pandemic) the story was brim-full of great characters, history, colorful cultural backgrounds and a very lovely, but imperfect protagonist. I am hopeful Vioteta gets picked up for a future movie and now...on to another of Allende's books! I will be promoting this book to all of my friends as a 'must-read'.