Publisher: Berkley Publishing, May 4th, 2021

Format: ebook

Pages: 320

Rating: 4/5 stars

Synopsis (from Goodreads):

At the end of the nineteenth century, three revolutionary women fight for freedom in New York Times bestselling author Chanel Cleeton’s captivating new novel inspired by real-life events and the true story of a legendary Cuban woman–Evangelina Cisneros–who changed the course of history.

A feud rages in Gilded Age New York City between newspaper tycoons William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. When Grace Harrington lands a job at Hearst’s newspaper in 1896, she’s caught in a cutthroat world where one scoop can make or break your career, but it’s a story emerging from Cuba that changes her life.

Unjustly imprisoned in a notorious Havana women’s jail, eighteen-year-old Evangelina Cisneros dreams of a Cuba free from Spanish oppression. When Hearst learns of her plight and splashes her image on the front page of his paper, proclaiming her, “The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba,” she becomes a rallying cry for American intervention in the battle for Cuban independence.

With the help of Marina Perez, a courier secretly working for the Cuban revolutionaries in Havana, Grace and Hearst’s staff attempt to free Evangelina. But when Cuban civilians are forced into reconcentration camps and the explosion of the USS Maine propels the United States and Spain toward war, the three women must risk everything in their fight for freedom. 

My Review:

Thank you Berkley Publishing Group for the copy of this book.
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Read if you like: strong female characters, historical fiction from multiple perspectives.
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This book follows three women as they become embroiled in Cuba’s struggle for independence. There is Grace, who is a reporter in New York who fights for her rights in a male dominated sphere. She was awesome and I absolutely loved her character. Then there is Evangelina, who is fighting for her family’s survival in Cuba. Finally, there is Marina, who wants to fight for her country alongside her husband, but is limited to what she can do because she has to take care of her daughter and mother in law. I loved that even though she was restricted, she was still a very strong character and worked to play a role in the fight.
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This book was gripping right from the beginning and I wanted to keep reading to find out what would happen to each of these three women! I love a story about women’s involvement during a time that women’s contributions were overlooked.
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CW: violence, misogyny, sexism, and sexual harassment.