Welcome to Thursday Quotables! This feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines will be, and you’re invited to join in! Hosted by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies.

So I’m actually going to do something a little different this time. I really didn’t end up saving the quotes that I wanted to share from my week of reading, and a lot of the books I listen to are on audiobook so once I listen to it, it’s gone from my mind. I think I may do this moving forward, but what I’ll do is revisit some books that I have read in the past and find a random quote from a random page and then reflect on it. We will see how it goes, but I think that it will be pretty fun.

Beatriz’s gaze meets mine, the wet sheen there covering steel. “One day they will pay,” she vows. “Yes, they will.”

chapter twenty-five, page 276, Elisa’s chapter

Well, for one, I can feel the vengeance in this short quote. I won’t say what happened to evoke such a response, but I love that it’s in there. In this book, even though we don’t hear from Beatriz, it’s always great to see her through Elisa’s eyes. I know that I need to do a reread of this one so that I can finally get into Beatriz’s story. I remember the first time I read this – I actually listened to it – so I feel like I may have sped through it too quickly. When I reread, I think I’ll work on annotating and fully immersing myself in the experience.

I think it’s impressive when an author can illicit strong emotional responses from very few words. It’s a testament to Cleeton’s writing style as well that even though we don’t see Beatriz’s point of view through this story, we can still feel her character. This is probably why the idea of telling Beatriz’s story was so appealing and popular to many people, and why we waited for Cleeton to write and release it. The Perez Family series seems to have the most popularity and traction among fans, and I hope that there are more included. Anything Cleeton writes in this world though, I’m sure that I will enjoy it the way I did with this one.

After the death of her beloved grandmother, a Cuban-American woman travels to Havana, where she discovers the roots of her identity–and unearths a family secret hidden since the revolution…

Havana, 1958. The daughter of a sugar baron, nineteen-year-old Elisa Perez is part of Cuba’s high society, where she is largely sheltered from the country’s growing political unrest–until she embarks on a clandestine affair with a passionate revolutionary…

Miami, 2017. Freelance writer Marisol Ferrera grew up hearing romantic stories of Cuba from her late grandmother Elisa, who was forced to flee with her family during the revolution. Elisa’s last wish was for Marisol to scatter her ashes in the country of her birth.

Arriving in Havana, Marisol comes face-to-face with the contrast of Cuba’s tropical, timeless beauty and its perilous political climate. When more family history comes to light and Marisol finds herself attracted to a man with secrets of his own, she’ll need the lessons of her grandmother’s past to help her understand the true meaning of courage.

Okay, I think I like this better. Mostly because I get to randomly open up a book I read a while ago and see what I can say about a quote from that page that sticks out to me. It was insane that I ended up opening to that page though, because I almost forgot about that part. I looked at when I first read this book, and it was back in 2019! Can you believe it? It amazes me that I read this book that long ago, and there are so many books about the Perez Family now that I have to catch up with. I’m glad that this was the first book that I read from Cleeton, and I’m glad that this book really got me to love historical fiction as a genre. It’s one of my favorite genres now, and I look forward to reading more.

Thanks again for enjoying this journey with me. See you tomorrow.