The Lost Story of Eva Fuentes by Chanel Cleeton-review

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ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date September 30, 2025

London, 2024: American expat Margo Reynolds is renowned for her talent at sourcing rare antiques for her clients, but she’s never had a request quite like this one. She’s been hired to find a mysterious book published over a century ago. With a single copy left in existence, it has a storied past shrouded in secrecy—and her client isn’t the only person determined to procure it at any cost.

Havana, 1966: Librarian Pilar Castillo has devoted her life to books, and in the chaotic days following her husband’s unjust imprisonment by Fidel Castro, reading is her only source of solace. So when a neighbor fleeing Cuba asks her to return a valuable book to its rightful owner, Pilar will risk everything to protect the literary work entrusted to her care. It’s a dangerous mission that reveals to her the power of one book to change a life.

Boston, 1900: For Cuban school teacher and aspiring author Eva Fuentes, traveling from Havana to Harvard to study for the summer is the opportunity of a lifetime. It’s a whirlwind adventure that leaves her little time to write, but a moonlit encounter with an enigmatic stranger changes everything. The story that pours out of her is one of forbidden love, secrets, and lies… and though Eva cannot yet see it, the book will be a danger and salvation for the lives it touches.

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REVIEW: THE LOST STORY OF EVA FUENTES by Chanel Cleeton is an emotional, adult, historical fiction, women’s suspense story following three timelines and the search for a book titled A Time For Forgetting by Cuban born author Eva Fuentes.

Told from three omniscient third person perspectives (Margo, Pilar, Eva), following three timelines (2024, 1966-70, 1900) THE LOST STORY OF EVA FUENTES focuses on a book titled A Time For Forgetting. In 1900, teacher and wanna-be author Eva Fuentes was asked to participate in what was to be known as The Cuban Summer School, wherein 1300 Cuban teachers were invited to spend the summer learning about the American educational system and cultural values, at Harvard University. Having started to write a novel back home , everything changed upon arrival in America including the content and direction of the book she would write.

In 1966, Cuban librarian Pilar Castillo’s husband was imprisoned for political subversion, and in the interim Pilar found herself a target of the Cuban government in the wake of her husband’s arrest. Having been tasked with ‘hiding’ the only copy of A Time For Forgetting, Pilar took the initiative to hide many more books considered disinformation and propaganda only to discover her friends and co-workers had been conscripted by the Cuban government, and our heroine was no longer able to trust the people she knew.

In 2024, antiquities buyer, American Margo Reynolds, now living in England, has been contracted to locate the only known copy of A Time For Forgetting but the deeper Margo digs, death and destruction follow in her wake. With the help of her former husband Luke, an ex-detective specializing in art crime, our couple go in search of the truth including information that will connect all three timelines together, covering approximately 120 years, navigating between America, Cuba, England, Scotland and Spain.

THE LOST STORY OF EVA FUENTES is a fictionalized story surrounded by historical fact focusing on several lifetimes of betrayal and secrets, and books that have been banned, restricted or removed by the people in charge. The Spanish-American War, the Cuban War of Independence, Bay of Pigs, Fidel Castro’s propaganda regime, and The Cuban Summer School at Harvard were all real-The Cuban Summer School at Harvard program was designed to introduce Cuban teachers to the American way of teaching, introducing cross-cultural empathy and understanding. The premise is dramatic, detailed and edgy; the characters are determined, dynamic and charismatic, and desperate enough to risk their lives for freedom, family and a new way of life.

Copy supplied for review

Reviewed by Sandy