Today I’m participating in WWW Wednesdays hosted by Sam of Taking on a World of Words.
The Three Ws are…
What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?
Currently Reading
Historical fiction all week… and I’m loving it. From a sweet and sexy romance to the hardships of living under a dictatorship, I’m definitely travelling around the world and through time with these stories.
The Price of Paradise by Susana López Rubio is a book I got for free this year during the Amazon World Book Day giveaway. The audio was also available at a reduced cost so I got that too. So far I’m enjoying listening and reading about Patricio and his very ambitious nature.
In a city as corrupt as it was luxurious, those who dared to dream were bound to pay the price.
Havana, Cuba, 1947. Young Patricio flees impoverished Spain and steps into the sultry island paradise of Havana with only the clothes on his back and half-baked dreams of a better life. Blessed with good looks and natural charm, he lands a job as a runner at El Encanto—one of the most luxurious department stores in the world.
Famous for its exquisite offerings from French haute couture to Arabian silks, El Encanto indulges the senses in opulent extravagance. It caters to visiting Hollywood stars, rising politicos, and prerevolutionary Cuba’s wealthiest power players, including the notorious mobster César Valdés.
Falling in love with the mobster’s young wife, Gloria, is suicide. But Patricio is irresistibly drawn to the beautiful girl with sad eyes, a razor-sharp intellect, and a penchant for both Christian Dior’s clothes and Einstein’s theories. Within the walls of El Encanto, anything seems possible, even a love that promises to heal them and a desire that thrums with the mambo beat of the city itself.
In a reckless love affair that spans half a century, Patricio’s and Gloria’s lives entwine time and again, challenged by every twist of fate—for in a world of murder, betrayal, and revolution, those who dare to reach for paradise seldom survive unscathed.
Recently Finished
Book 3 in the Wallflower series by Lisa Kleypas was every bit as delightful as the first 2!
“I’m Sebastian, Lord St. Vincent. I can’t be celibate. Everyone knows that.”
Desperate to escape her scheming relatives, Evangeline Jenner has sought the help of the most infamous scoundrel in London.
A marriage of convenience is the only solution.
No one would have ever paired the shy, stammering wallflower with the sinfully handsome viscount. It quickly becomes clear, however, that Evie is a woman of hidden strength—and Sebastian desires her more than any woman he’s ever known.
Determined to win her husband’s elusive heart, Evie dares to strike a bargain with the devil: If Sebastian can stay celibate for three months, she will allow him into her bed.
When Evie is threatened by a vengeful enemy from the past, Sebastian vows to do whatever it takes to protect his wife . . . even at the expense of his own life.
Together they will defy their perilous fate, for the sake of all-consuming love.
Up Next
Possibly the heaviest of the three, In the Time of Butterflies looks at the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic. I’m looking forward to seeing how the historical details are presented.
“A magnificent treasure for all cultures and all time.” –St. Petersburg Times
It is November 25, 1960, and three beautiful sisters have been found near their wrecked Jeep at the bottom of a 150-foot cliff on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. The official state newspaper reports their deaths as accidental. It does not mention that a fourth sister lives. Nor does it explain that the sisters were among the leading opponents of Gen. Rafael Leónidas Trujillo’s dictatorship. It doesn’t have to. Everybody knows of Las Mariposas–the Butterflies.
In this extraordinary novel, the voices of all four sisters–Minerva, Patria, María Teresa, and the survivor, Dedé–speak across the decades to tell their own stories, from secret crushes to gunrunning, and to describe the everyday horrors of life under Trujillo’s rule. Through the art and magic of Julia Alvarez’s imagination, the martyred Butterflies live again in this novel of courage and love, and the human costs of political oppression.
These are the stories filling my days at the moment.
What about you? Have you read any of these? What are you enjoying today?
The Cozy Pages 
Happy to see the historical fictions 😊 happy Reading 📖
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