Peel My Love Like an Onion

Has there ever been a character in a novel stranger, more hypnotic and more entrancing than Carmen La Coja? Not for me. Peel My Love Like an Onion is the story of Carmen La Coja or the Cripple who has a crippled leg, shriveled from polio. It doesn’t stop her from pursuing her dream of becoming a Flamenco dancer, from being beautiful and seductive or from carrying herself with pride. However, when Carmen is not dancing, she loses her surety, her poise and grace.

The book is the story of Carmen’s finding of herself. It is a love story as well. Carmen falls in love with a young gypsy dancer in her troupe, Manolo the nephew of Augustin, leader of the troupe and also Carmen’s married lover. There is love and betrayal, bitter disappointment and loss, confusion and sexuality in this marvelous book about the unquenchable spirit that resides in Carmen La Coja.

After years of dancing, her polio returns and she is forced to stop dancing, to take odd jobs and move home with her parents. Slowly, Carmen is feeling suffocated, bereft and just as slowly she fights her way back and reclaims her life, her spirit and her identity.

Ana Castillo writes with exquisite detail. We feel every emotion and sensation. Like the onion referenced in the title, this book has layers and layers to be peeled away and tasted. It’s a powerful and strangely beautiful story that will stay with you and pop into your head at odd moments to make you smile.

The Dark Highlander

I picked up this nifty little book at the Del Rey booth at Comic Con and headed back to my booth happy to have something, anything to read in those sometimes slow moments at the booth. The girl at Del Rey said I’d love it, that it was really good and I have to say I had my doubts. I don’t usually read romance novels. Just not my style. However, I was blown away by this one and I’ll be picking up all this author’s titles quite soon.

The Dark Highlander is an enchanting tale of a cursed 16th century Druidic Highlander, who crossed a time portal to save his brother and in so doing, absorbed into himself 13 souls of evil and ancient Druids. He is fighting a losing battle trying to keep these evil souls from totally possessing him and bringing doom to the world. Oh yeah and the way he keeps them at bay is to lose himself in sexual pursuits.

“I am Dageus MacKeltar, a man with one good conscience and thirteen bad ones, driven to sate my darkest desires…”

This Scot is handsome, wealthy and a sex machine! Still, he tormented by the demons and determined to find a way to rid himself of them. He also has the ability to time travel into our century which he does in his search for rare manuscripts which may contain a hint of how to oust the evil souls. The Tuatha de Danan or fairy folk are also involved in this story. It was their Queen who originally trapped the evil Druids which now live inside of Dageus.

Enter Chloe Zanders, student of antiquities and lover of all things Scottish. She finds herself trapped in Daegus’s penthouse and begins to help him on his quest. A dangerous faction of modern day evil Druids are lurking and Chloe and Dageus are dodging danger everywhere.

This is a fine and involved tale and a lovely romance as well. If you’re looking for a heck of a good and entertaining time, then pick this up. I had the best time reading it.

Loving Pedro Infante

“If you’re Mejicana or Mejicano and don’t know who Pedro Infante is, you should be tied to a hot stove with yucca rope and beaten with sharp dry corn husks as you stand in a vat of soggy fideos”

- Denise Chavez (Loving Pedro Infante)



Okay, I just had to start my review off with that passage because when I read it, I laughed aloud. It is just such a typical Xicano, Mejicano curse that I’m sure we’ve all heard something like it from our abuelitos or our parents.

Loving Pedro Infante is the story of Teresina Avila and her friend Irma “La Wirms” Granados who live in Cabritoville and belong to the Pedro Infante Club #256 along with other women in the small town. These women are Pedro crazy and I can understand that being a big Pedro Infante fan myself.

The story is also about love and obsession. Tere is in love with an hijo de la… named Lucio who is of course, married and a slimy worm. That doesn’t stop Tere from loving him though and from being obsessed. She sneaks off to meet him in a motel, battles with her best friend over him, hides and sneaks. She is ashamed of the relationship but that doesn’t stop her from seeking him out. Why do some guys do this to us? I think all of us women have had our Lucio. Handsome devils, good at making us feel that we are unworthy when all the time, the problem is their own insecurities, bullshit and emotional issues.

The book is great. I loved the characters, was at times frustrated with Tere, liked her, thought she was an idiot, wanted her to kick Lucio’s tight Mexican butt all the way out of Cabritoville and cheered her on. The fan club were so much like all my abuela’s old friends that swooned over Pedro Infante and loved their daughters and families fiercely. Denise Chavez tells a hell of a story.

Denise Chavez’ Loving Pedro Infante is a book that I started off loving and couldn’t put it down to a book that I tossed behind my bed in a corner to collect dust and accuse me until I picked it up again. Why did I toss it? Because the character that Teresina Avila is in love with – Lucio was so much like my own hijo de la… ex boyfriend that it made me uncomfortable. We were in yet another or our cycles where we were together again after having been broken up and the book made me see things in him that I didn’t want to see or wasn’t ready to. No, mine wasn’t married but he was still an hijo de la… all the same. He pulled his disappearing acts like Lucio and he was just generally unavailable and I was just as obsessed as Tere which is probably why I was so darn mad at her for half of the book.

It’s not often that an writer can look into the reader’s heart and soul and pluck the strings so well that the reader believes the book is about their own life. Denise Chavez does this easily and while I was uncomfortable at times, it was a damn good book and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I loved reading about Pedro Infante too. She gives lots of great tidbits of his life and films, which were a nice bonus for this Infante fan.

Viva Pedro Infante and Viva Denise Chavez! Oh, and to my Lucio (you know who you are), go stand in the soggy fideos!

Cabaret: A Roman Riddle by Lily Prior

I just finished an ARE (Advanced Reader Edition) of Lily Prior's latest book Cabaret. What a blast and what an amazing little book!

I had such a great time reading about the bizarre Freda Lippi, her parrot Pierino and the wonderful cast of characters that populate her world. I loved Freda's interactions with the sexy Detective Balbini and the chemistry between them. Freda's sister Fiamma is quite interesting as well.

The book starts off with Freda coming home to find her home overrun by detectives, her fat ventriloquist of a cheating husband missing along with her beloved parrot. Freda's quest to find her parrot, passion for Balbini, and memories of how her life came to the place she was in now were all so insane and strange but so well written and amusing.

It was great fun and the last sentence quite shocking. I almost jumped out of my seat! I felt as if I had been to the theatre. How marvelously entertaining it was. I thouroughly enjoyed Cabaret and will be on the look out for more from Lily Prior.

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.