Our Last Days in Barcelona by Chanel Cleeton-Review & Excerpt
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ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date May 24, 2022.
When Isabel Perez travels to Barcelona to save her sister Beatriz, she discovers a shocking family secret in New York Times bestselling author Chanel Cleeton’s new novel.
Barcelona, 1964. Exiled from Cuba after the revolution, Isabel Perez has learned to guard her heart and protect her family at all costs. After Isabel’s sister Beatriz disappears in Barcelona, Isabel goes to Spain in search of her. Joining forces with an unlikely ally thrusts Isabel into her sister’s dangerous world of espionage, but it’s an unearthed piece of family history that transforms Isabel’s life.
Barcelona, 1936. Alicia Perez arrives in Barcelona after a difficult voyage from Cuba, her marriage in jeopardy and her young daughter Isabel in tow. Violence brews in Spain, the country on the brink of civil war, the rise of fascism threatening the world. When Cubans journey to Spain to join the International Brigades, Alicia’s past comes back to haunt her as she is unexpectedly reunited with the man who once held her heart.
Alicia and Isabel’s lives intertwine, and the past and present collide, as a mother and daughter are forced to choose between their family’s expectations and following their hearts.
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REVIEW:OUR LAST DAYS IN BARCELONA by Chanel Cleeton is an adult, story of historical fiction focusing on the Perez family that runs parallel to and crosses over with the author’s WHEN WE LEFT CUBA.
SOME BACKGROUND: The Perez family are Cuban immigrants who fled to America during the Cuban Revolution in 1960. Second born daughter Beatriz Perez would be recruited by the CIA for her political ideology, in an effort to infiltrate the anti-Castro organizations. Eventually Beatriz would find herself in Barcelona Spain, and her family hasn’t heard from their sister in close to three weeks.
Told from three first person perspectives (Isabel, Alicia, and Rosa) following two timelines 1937 and 1964, OUR LAST DAYS IN BARCELONA focuses on Isabel Perez’s search in 1964 for her sister Beatriz Perez, who is currently working undercover for the CIA. Isabel Perez, married to a man she does not love, journeys to Spain to search for her missing sister where she will meet and fall in love with her sister’s American counterpart Diego.
Returning to 1937 Cuba, just prior to Spain’s involvement in the Second World War, Isabel and Beatriz’s mother Alicia Perez’s marriage is at risk of imploding. With her two year old daughter Isabel, Alicia Perez heads to Barcelona Spain, where she will stay for an extended visit with parents and younger sister Consuelo, a visit where Alicia will fall in love with someone else.
At the same time, Alicia’s best friend Rosa’s marriage has been rocked by the death of her husband Gonzalo, a man who left Cuba to fight for the Spanish during the revolution of 1934 but Rosa’s world continues to crumble as her in-laws refuse to acknowledge her existence never knowing that the man with whom Rosa has fallen in love, is a man close to their hearts.
OUR LAST DAYS IN BARCELONA is a detailed, dramatic and emotional story of family and relationships, betrayal and heart break. The premise is intense; the characters are flawed and dysfunctional; the romances are tragic and real.
Reading Order and Previous Reviews focusing on the Perez family
Next Year in Havana
When We Left Cuba
The Last Train to Key West
Copy supplied for review
Reviewed by Sandy
OUR LAST DAYS IN BARCELONA by Chanel Cleeton
Berkley Trade Paperback Original | On Sale May 24, 2022
Excerpt
It’s been my experience that relationships are often about balance: one person tends to be the star, and the other is there to support them, to play those all-important background roles of advice and support. And sometimes, maybe, the roles shift a bit, although in my reality it has been almost entirely the man who is held in such a place of honor and esteem. Knowing my sister as I do, and her inevitable draw to the limelight whether intentional or otherwise, I can’t see her playing the role of the-woman-behind-the-man while Nicholas Preston ascends to political greatness. And I can’t imagine a man with such political ambitions and connections being happy throwing it all away for a life of relative obscurity.
If Beatriz is in Barcelona nursing a broken heart, the big sister in me wants to be there for her.
The flight is uneventful, the last hours passed staring out the window, questioning the decision to send me rather than Elisa as the family envoy, weighing the odds of Beatriz being happy to see me against the far more likely possibility that she’ll be less than enthused.
“I have a four-year-old,” Elisa pointed out when I suggested she would be more successful and welcomed by Beatriz. “How am I supposed to leave for Spain? Do you suggest I take Miguel with me?” She laughed at that, and given how energetic my nephew is, I can’t quite blame her for not wanting to bring him on an international flight to Europe by herself.
In the end, after much prevarication, and a fair dose of pleading with Thomas, who thought it both unseemly for his wife to travel by herself and has always harbored a strong dislike for Beatriz and her reputation, he reluctantly acquiesced, giving me a week away.
Armed with the return address on Beatriz’s letters to Elisa, a bit of money, my suitcase, and little else, I step off the plane when it lands at the airport in Barcelona and hire a taxi to take me to Beatriz’s home.
After a few initial minutes of conversation in Spanish, the driver leaves me to my own devices, and I stare out the window of the cab as he makes the twenty-minute journey, my gaze on the city.
I thought of dialing Beatriz’s number from the airport, warning her of my arrival before I showed up on her doorstep, but any attempts to call her before this trip have been met with silence, and I must admit I worried a bit that if Beatriz did answer the phone this time, she might tell me to turn back around and return to Palm Beach.
The farther we get from the airport, the more congested the city becomes, and I realize we’re near the center of Barcelona now.
Beatriz’s return address from her letter is a smart building on Las Ramblas with a beige stone facade and little balconies with red wrought iron railings. The taxi lets me off right before it.
It’s the sort of place I can imagine Beatriz living—elegant with a dash of whimsy. I can envision my sister leaning over the balcony railing, her dark hair billowing around her as she calls out good-naturedly to pedestrians, her laughter ringing down Las Ramblas. It is quintessentially Beatriz, both the privilege seeped in living in one of the city’s most desirable locales and the slight bohemian bent a city like Barcelona thrives on: art, music, and culture seemingly on every street corner.
It is a far cry from my life and the one our mother wanted for us in Palm Beach; no doubt, much of the allure for Beatriz was escaping to a place where there is anonymity in the crowded streets and bustling pace, where the need to see and be seen does not reign paramount.
But still, it raises the ever-important question that has been on my mind since Elisa first told me Beatriz had left:
Why?
Why Barcelona?
And given the environs where she’s chosen to live, who is funding this adventure?
A list of names of apartment residents is affixed near the building entry. I scan the directory until I settle on a “B. Perez.”
I set my suitcase down on the ground and lift my gloved hand, my heart pounding as I press the buzzer next to Beatriz’s name.
Excerpted from Our Last Days in Barcelona by Chanel Cleeton Copyright © 2022 by Chanel Cleeton. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved.
Chanel Cleeton is the USA Today bestselling author of Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick Next Year in Havana. Originally from Florida, Chanel grew up on stories of her family’s exodus from Cuba following the events of the Cuban Revolution. Her passion for politics and history continued during her years spent studying in England where she earned a bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Richmond, The American International University in London and a master’s degree in Global Politics from the London School of Economics & Political Science. Chanel also received her Juris Doctor from the University of South Carolina School of Law. She loves to travel and has lived in the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia.
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