“Either you follow-up, or you fold-up.” – Bernard Kelvin Cline
TGIF, my friends. Although the days of 2020 seem to blend together, Fridays still tend to be extra sweet. It’s an extra special Friday to chat lit, as we’re moving into the cozy days of fall—hope you have a chance to nestle under a blanket with your favorite drink and current read this weekend!
We’ve shared posts about books that now have sequels, so of course, we had to read them. Be warned: it’s rare to find a sequel that’s better than the original, but the books below are worth your time. If you haven’t read the original books, we suggest putting a pin in this post until you’ve dived into the originals.
P.S. There are multiple spoilers in the review below!
“If I’m going to have regrets in this life, I’d rather them be for the chances I took and not the opportunities I let slip away.”
If this post rang true to you, get excited: Chanel Cleeton’s sequel When We Left Cuba tells the story of Beatriz, the life of the party in the Perez family. SPOILER ALERT: Following their exile from Cuba, Beatriz focuses her efforts to going back. Her goal: avenge her brother’s death and kill Fidel Castro, while working with the CIA. Adding a layer of complexity, Beatriz falls in love in with a powerful politician and begins a secret (and forbidden) relationship. Trying to balance her secret missions and passions proves difficult. Beatriz is left with no choice but to sacrifice one to gain the other.
This book deserves a solid 3.7 out of 5 stars. Most sequels have a hard time packing the same punch that originals do. You gotta give Cleeton credit though, it’s hard to come off a home run of a first release (just ask MC Hammer). While the story of Next Year in Havana is more captivating, you’ll be turning pages to find out what crazy thing Beatriz does next.
“When you get old, you become invisible. It’s just the truth. And yet it’s freeing in a way…You go through life and you think you are something. Not in a good way, and not in a bad way. But you think you are something, and then you see that you are no longer anything. To a waitress with a huge hind end you’ve become invisible. And it’s freeing.”
Glowing praise from Tracy for Olive Kitteridge motivated my mom and me to get to know the impossibly flawed Mainer. The prize winner one of the best-written books we’ve read all year, so the natural next step was to read her second story, Olive, Again. Elizabeth Strout picks up her story where she left off – we’re taken directly into the mind of Olive, as she provides the blunt reasoning produced by her later years. Not only is she attempting to mend the relationship with her son and daughter-in-law, she’s trying to navigate (and squander) her feelings for Jack Kennison. Thirteen additional stories from the townspeople of Crosby tie together 10 more years of Olive’s life. Jump into the story to join the pursuit of Olive’s quest to find what makes her “not unhappy.”
While the original book had better stories and more thought-provoking mind rants, Strout poses deep life questions that one ponders towards the end of their lives. The sequel deserves 4 out of 5 stars and a few hours of your time.
PS- if you’re into TV, HBO made the first book into a mini-series!