When I was asked to review Next Year in Havana, it was a tough choice to make. It seemed so far out of my wheelhouse and I’ve had bad luck in the past with celebrity book club picks, so I had no clue what to expect from this! Since I make a habit of not accepting review requests for books I don’t expect to rate favorably, I thought on this one a little, but when I learned that the story was (at least partially) inspired by the author’s own Cuban heritage, I decided to give it a chance—and I am so happy that I did.

To be in exile is to have the things you love most in the world—the air you breathe, the earth you walk upon—taken from you.

First, let me talk a little bit about the writing in this book. I typically don’t do any sort of permanent annotations in my books, but when I found myself reaching for my fourth page tab in only three pages, I gave up and grabbed a highlighter. My friends, my copy of this book is now at least 35% pink, because it seemed like almost every single page had quotable phrases or passages that hit me in the chest with how beautiful, poignant, or outright powerful they were.

Havana is like a woman who was grand once and has fallen on hard times, and yet hints of her former brilliance remain, traces of an era since passed, a photograph faded by time and circumstance, its edges crumbling to dust.

Some of my favorite facets to the story were the ways in which Havana herself—and Cuba, by extension—were treated less like a place, and more like a character. As we alternate perspectives between Marisol’s journey and Elisa’s letters, we watch Havana shift and fall into disarray, becoming something largely unrecognizable, and it brings about the most tragic sense of mourning in the ways the region is described.

“Very few can afford the luxury of being political in Cuba.”
“And no one can afford the luxury of not being political in Cuba.”

What surprised me most about Next Year in Havana was how immensely political it is. Don’t let the soft, lovely cover and synopsis fool you into expecting a love story—while there are two paralleling romances woven through, more than anything, this story is a forlorn love song to the freedoms that Cubans have been denied by both Batista and Castro over the decades. Intermingled with the discussions of tragedies, violent oppression, and missed opportunities, there is also a stream of incredibly relevant commentary on racism in Cuba and the US, the United States’ part played in causing the struggles of Cuban citizens, and the sense of dysphoria in the hearts of Cuban exiles and their descendants as they are torn between missing their home and feeling unwelcome there for having left.

We are silk and lace, and beneath them we are steel.

There’s also a beautiful message of feminism and the difficulties that come not only with being a woman in general, but also specifically with being a woman in Cuba during the political unrest. Likewise, there are pieces of dialogue regarding the classism in Cuba—both in Elisa’s and Marisol’s time frames—and the fact that the Cuban citizens in the modern sides of the story largely feel that they have been abandoned to make room for tourists. While many of these scenes are tough to read about, they open up space for us to see the fire in the hearts of the people who want to better their home in any way possible, at any cost.

I’ve become unmoored with my grandmother’s passing; Ana is right—my grandmother was my anchor, and now that she’s gone, I’m adrift.

If I can get a bit more personal for a moment, I also genuinely enjoyed Marisol’s memories of her grandmother, and the authenticity behind her grief at the woman’s passing. Though my upbringing was under very different circumstances, my grandmother had a major role in raising me—like Elisa did with Marisol—for the first twelve years of my life, and continued to play an important role for many years after. It’s been a few years now since she passed, but all of those emotions welled back up inside of me when Marisol grieved her, and it was such a cathartic process that I’m tremendously grateful to Chanel Cleeton for including it.

There’s a novelty to this that catches me off guard. He is both old and new at once, and I can’t ignore the voice inside me—
Pay attention. This is important. He is important.

I’ll try to wrap this up and not just keep gushing, but the last thing I wanted to say is that, even though it feels like the least important aspect of the story by far, I wholeheartedly enjoyed the blossoming romance in Marisol’s chapters, and found myself on the edge of my seat, knowing that there was no easy answer to her falling in love with a Cuban revolutionary like her grandmother before her. I found it poignant and sweet, and it held just the right amount of presence to lighten bits of the story and add emotional weight without ever detracting from what was most important.

That’s the thing about death—even when you think someone is gone, glimpses of them remain in those they loved and left behind.

Ultimately, all I can say is that I recommend this book so very highly, whether you enjoy historical fiction, sweet love stories, political commentary, or any mixture of the above. Not being Cuban myself, I obviously cannot speak to how accurate the portrayals of Cuba or her citizens are, but knowing that Chanel Cleeton’s own family came from Cuba, I can only imagine that she wrote her truth as genuinely as she could. I am tremendously grateful to have this story in my life, and to Berkley for offering it to me, and I will be waiting eagerly for the companion novel, When We Left Cuba.

Thank you so much to Berkley for providing me with this BEAUTIFUL finished copy in exchange for an honest review!

You can find this review and more on my blog, or you can follow me on twitter, bookstagram, or facebook!

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Buddy read with Courtney!