As a sought-after wedding planner to New York’s elite, Olga Acevedo seems to have everything – except the approval of her absent militant revolutionary of a mother, who abandoned Olga and her charismatic congressman brother, Prieto, as children, to head off on a mission to advance the Puerto Rican cause. They’ve both done well, though, so who cares if Olga hasn’t found love, and Prieto has a few skeletons rattling in his closet? But when Blanca makes an insidious ‘return’ 27 years after disappearing, stirring up old secrets and hurts, both Olga and Prieto must face their demons. I fell in love with vibrant, flawed Olga from the moment she considered how to steal the high-end napkins from a client’s wedding celebrations to repurpose them at her cousin Mabel’s less-than-classy nuptials – Xochitl has a gift for creating fully-fledged characters that tug at your heartstrings and make you tut in equal measure. A nuanced romp of a story.
Reviewed by Mindful Puzzles Editor, Donnay Torr.
