What buzzy book did you miss when it came out, and then ended up loving when you finally got to it? For me, it’s Cantoras by Carolina de Robertis. This book has been in my backlog for a long time. @aaknopf sent me the ARC before it came out in 2019, and I’ve held onto it since then. Because I don’t always love historical fiction, and I’m not often in the mood for it, I didn’t prioritize reading this one. But, I still held onto it, because I’d heard enough rave reviews to figure that it could be an exception.

All this to say that I’m very glad that my friend @bookmarkedbya recommended this one as her 12 books 12 friends pick for me. I mostly listened to this one on audio, and I absolutely loved it. Cantoras tells the stories of five gay women in Uruguay, from the 1970s to the present day. At the beginning of the novel, they live in secret, under a dictatorship, where it’s illegal and even dangerous to be gay. Somehow, they still manage to find each other. One summer, they take a trip to a remote beach town, Cabo Polonio, and are briefly able to live freely as they are. Over the years, as their relationships with each other ebb and flow, as the country undergoes political turmoil, and each woman undergoes personal changes, the group is anchored by their friendship and their visits to their secret paradise.

The five main characters in this novel are all so interesting and complex that I could have read a whole book about each of them individually. The descriptions of the landscapes (physical and political) drew me in completely. de Robertis narrates the audiobook herself and wow, it is fantastic. Authors narrating their own work can be hit or miss for me (writer and voice actor are very different jobs) but this is one of the better fiction audiobooks I’ve listened to. All around, this is truly a beautifully told story. I loved it. If you also missed this one when it came out, I highly recommend reading it now.