A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow by Laura Taylor Namey

Her life was plagued by the trifecta. A disastrous triad of events impacted the very essence of who Lila was, not only her present but her future too. After pushing herself to the point of exhaustion and scaring her family, already struck with grief. The LAST NAME family has no other card left, but to send Lila to visit her family in Winchester, Hampshire, England. Separated from her family, beloved La Panderia kitchen, and left to confront her emotional inner turmoil with distant family. Lila finds solace in the neighborhood, with new friends and a friendly tea shop clerk, Orion.

As a Cuban woman who spent most of her life visiting family in Miami, this book spoke to my soul. All the family narrative mimicked something that would be overheard at reunions or muttered through the neighborhood chismosas (gossipers). It was such a slice of my life, one that I haven’t been able to find in literature before. What brings it to another level is that my sweetheart is British. When describing the plot of this book to him he simply said, “it’s like they took your life story...a Cuban girl coming to England and falling in love”. The dialogue between Orion and Lila is very reminiscent of our conversations..an unique mixture between Spanglish and British idioms. It’s something that has me smiling hours after reading and I often find myself reading passages aloud to him. My romantic and personal life aside, this book was captivating. It held my attention at every turn of the page and had me threatening to finish the book in one sitting. It’s only been a few months and I’ve already been recommending and handing my copy over for my loved ones to read and fall in love with this book. Very much looking forward to reading what Namey will publish in the future.

Where to Buy:

Barnes and Noble

Powell’s

Comments

The Sanatorium (Detective Elin Warner #1) by Sarah Pearse

"Grief is like a series of bombs exploding, one after another. Every house, a new detonation. Shock after shock after shock." Le Sommet is a horrible place, surrounded by local legends and rumors, the once abandoned tuberculosis sanatorium has found its second life as a five-star hotel. It is as imposing as it is beautiful, and being high up in the Swiss Alps makes it a remote get away. It's also the last place Elin Warner wants to be stuck, having taken a leave of absence from her work as a detective, decides to brave the journey. Especially when her estranged brother and his fiancée reach out and invite her to celebrate their engagement. She arranges in the middle of a terrible storm with her boyfriend, already on edge when they wake the following morning to discover her brothers fiancée has gone missing. Elin is thrust into the case when everyone gets stormed in and the police aren't able to access the hotel, making the guests panic even...

The Whisper Man by Alex North

"If you leave a door half open, soon you'll hear the whispers spoken. If you play outside alone, soon you won't be going home. If your window's left unlatched, you'll hear him tapping at the glass. If you're lonely, sad, and blue, the Whisper Man will come for you." After the sudden death of his wife, Tom Kennedy and his son Jake get a fresh start in a Featherbank by purchasing a new home. Unbeknownst to him, Featherbank has a terrible past. A serial killer abducted and murdered five local children, nicknamed "The Whisper Man", because he was luring children out of their homes by whispering at their windows and doors at night. As soon as they moved into their new home, another young boy was abducted in a way very similar to the whisper man and Jake begins hearing whispers at his window. Detectives Pete Willis and Amanda Beck are trying their best to find the boy before it's too late. Even visiting Frank Carter, the original whisper man, i...

The Necromancer's Library (Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper #12) by J.L Bryan

"We all have our little gardens of dead dreams, don't we? And sometimes we still try to water and tend those gardens, long after we should know nothing will ever grow there." In this installment of the Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper series, the team is sent to investigate a potential haunting at an antebellum mansion in the middle of the countryside. A pair of sisters currently reside there because the previous owner, a deceased reclusive professor, hired someone to transform his massive collection into some semblance of organization. The oldest sister Cherise is a university student who is cataloguing the entire collection. The issue is, it's a collection of ancient and medieval manuscripts and items. The library and mansion are filled with terribly haunting spirits-both helpful, lost, and frightening. Even when exploring the grounds they come across an eerie family cemetery in the overgrown woods and run into a figure trying to communicate something seriou...

Bethany's Book Nook

Search This Blog