Found Not Lost

Title: Tell Me Something True
Author: Leila Cobo

Publish Date: 10/1/2009
ISBN: 9780446519366
Pages: 320

Summary
Gabriella always loved the picture of her mother kneeling in front of a bed of roses, smiling, beautiful and impossibly happy. But then she learns that her late mother hated gardening; that she had never wanted the house in the Hollywood hills, the successful movie producer husband, and possibly, her only daughter. When Gabriella discovers a journal–a book that begins as a new mother’s letters to her baby girl, but becomes a secret diary–the final entry leaves one question unanswered: the night her mother died, was she returning to Colombia to end an affair, or was she abandoning her family for good?

About the Author
Renowned journalist and former concert pianist, Leila Cobo is a native of Cali, Colombia. The Executive Director of Latin Content & Programming for Billboard, she is a frequent contributor to NPR and has written liner notes for acts such as Ricky Martin, Shakira and Chayanne. She is also the host of the television show Estudio Billboard, which features in-depth interviews with top Latin acts. Leila is a Fulbright scholar with a graduate degree from the Annenberg School of Communications at USC and holds dual degrees in journalism, from Bogota’s Universidad Javeriana, and in piano performance from the Manhattan School of Music.

Tell Me Something True was one of the many that I read during my short hiatus. It was part of the Hispanic Heritage Month giveaway package here a couple of months ago if you remember. I read through this book in a couple of hours because, again, I couldn’t put it down. I just love books that can capture your attention this way and hold it.

Gabriella is a child of two worlds. She lives with her American father in Beverly Hills, the land of movie stars, wealth, plastic surgeries and acne treatments, but once a year she visit her grandmother in Columbia, a tradition that started soon after her mother’s untimely death in a plane crash when she was just a little girl. It is during one of these visits that several things happened to change her life. The main thing is, she comes across a diary written by her dead mother. Reading her mother’s words, she not only learns more about her but she also learns a secret that changes the way she looks at her life and her relationship with her family. Learning that her mother had an affair during one of her trips home to Colombia unsettled her and made her feel a bit rebellious. She felt betrayed that the image she had of her mother was all wrong. That maybe the picture she had held in her mind is not the truth. Maybe that was one reason she was drawn to Angel, the son of a convicted drug dealer, who she met at a party in Cali. Maybe with Angel she felt she was getting a taste of what her mother must have felt.

This story is beautifully written. Every detail, every event flowed perfectly in a way that you just didn’t want to put it down. You want to keep turning the page to see what happens next. By the end of the book, you are so deeply entrenched that you don’t want it to end. I certainly didn’t. I wanted the story to continue. I wanted to see what happened next to all the characters involved. I was left literally wanting more.

I received a free copy of this book to review from Hachette Book Groups without obligations for a positive review or other compensation.

Tags: book reviews, Hachette Books