3.5 stars.

The writing was pretty phenomenal, I really enjoyed the historical aspect, and I had a hard time tearing myself away from this book. This book is correctly compared to "The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo." Just add the Cuban revolution and multi-generational mother/daughter relationships in there. I love historical fiction and enjoy multi-generational family sagas a lot so I really liked the lead up to the climax/the end.

The book was tense throughout and I think the author did a fantastic job of building tension throughout scenes. She introduced characters well and build them up pretty well. I had a bit of a hard time swallowing the believability of the the mother's romantic partners but they helped move the plot along so I found that relatively easy to overlook.

I have to round my rating down though because of the end. The prologue pulled me in but by the time we got to the resolution I was really disappointed in the way the character's stories ended. Some of it was sweet but I mostly just disappointed.

* I want to add that the audiobook is also VERY well produced and worth a listen!

Spoiler

I don't like that Nina's entire ending revolved around a man/finding love. I really didn't like that. Although I did think it was sweet that she found Julian's family and got the big family she wanted I wanted to see something more beyond just romance as part of her character arc. Also I wish we had some justice against Rodrigo. That was all so frustrating. After so much injustice in the book it would've been nice to have some kind of justice.