Unsettling - Lynda Sandoval

I loved this book. The characters were very real and so much like the wonderful Mexicana women I know. It speaks of true sisterhood, friendship, and the strong bond of being a Latina woman living as an American woman and how we deal with the strange dichotomy of having a foot firmly planted in each world.

The book starts with the correspondence amongst a group of friends, Mercedes, Christina and Annette gathering together to stand by Lucy Olivares, a police officer and bride to be notoriously terrified of being married yet full of love for her fiancé, Ruben. Lucy is terrified of the family curse. Every woman in her family’s first marriage ends in divorce with the second marriage being the lasting one.
Mercedes is the driven career woman, Christina the beautiful socialite wife and Annette the happy homemaker. Each very different and complex woman has her own issues, secrets, problems and private heartaches yet they all manage to gather to get Lucy to the altar.

When Lucy bolts right after the wedding, the women begin a journey together, a quest to help Lucy face her fear and save her marriage to the man she adores. On this quest, each woman finds her own answers, has her own personal quest and journey of the soul to make. The book is insightful and revealing and Lynda Sandoval knows just how to make us care desperately about the outcome of each personal odyssey.

Strong, intelligent, warm and funny, the characters leapt off the page and into my heart. I really liked these women. I wanted them as my friends. The problems they had and they ways in which they dealt with or avoided them were touching and real.


Unsettling made me laugh and cry. It was wonderful storytelling with well-developed and believable characters. I have recommended it to my own circle of wonderful, strong Xicana women and they loved it too. I eagerly await more from Ms. Sandoval.