3.5 stars

The sequel to Allende’s Daughter of Fortune is well worth your time picking up if you enjoyed the first one, but I did think Portrait in Sepia was a bit lacklustre in comparison to its predecessor. There wasn’t the same amount of passion and vibrancy leaping off the page, but as it’s Allende you can be sure that there is still SOME passion!
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She is such a natural storyteller that I always can’t help but devour her books in a day or two. She weaves her stories so well that everything feels immediate and present, even when you’re in 19th century San Francisco during the gold rush, or Chile during the civil war. Her sense of time and place is unparalleled. Plus, this one is translated by my favourite so far of Allende’s translators, Margaret Sayers Peden! I cannot fault her work.
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I always love it when authors reference their other works in books, and I positively fangirled when we got a glimpse of Clara del Valle, the famous Clara the Clairvoyant from House of the Spirits!! No one writes family dynasties like Allende! Paulina del Valle was probably my favourite character, the majestic and imposing matriarch of the family. And of course, reconnecting with characters from Daughter of Fortune was wonderful.
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But ultimately I didn’t find it quite as compelling as book one, maybe I preferred the characters in that one to the main characters here. Towards the end it felt like it lost its way a bit, and tapered off with not quite as big a bang as I was expecting.