Tell Me Something True Review

TITLE: Tell Me Something True
AUTHOR: Leila Cobo
PUB DATE: October 1, 2009

ABOUT THE BOOK:
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?

MY THOUGHTS:

I have had this book on my TBR pile since early summer and I only got around to reading it once I heard Leila Cobo being interviewed by Miriam from HBG on Blog Talk Radio. You can listen to the interview here:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/grandcentralpub/2009/10/15/Live-Interview-with-Leila-Cobo-author-of-TELL-ME-SOMETHING-TRUE

This is Leila Cobo’s debut novel. I have to say that I really did enjoy it after hearing the interview. Especially when I heard her character Angel was based on a certain someone that I have had the chance to meet in 2007. To find out who it is you will have to read the post.

The book was written with two alternating viewpoints Gabriella’s and Helena’s diary.

I love the cover of the book. What is there not to love about it? The little girl is just to cute sitting at the piano. It reminds me a little of Michael cause at my in laws they have a piano just like that and he likes to sit and play it.

I enjoyed Tell Me Something True. It was a beautiful debut novel. I am looking forward to reading more from Leila in the future.

Tell Me Something True is about Gabriella, a young woman (in her early 20s) and she is half American and half Colombian. Helena, her mother died when Gabriella was only four years old. Helena died in a plane crash in Cali, Colombia.

Every summer for a month Gabriella goes to Cali to spend time with her grandmother. She never misses it and looks forward to being there because she is waited on hand and foot but her grandmother’s servants. Something that she doesn’t have in California with her father.

Gabriella always believed that her mother and father led a perfect life. She discovers that this isn’t the case when she visits her grandmother. When her grandmother tells Gabriella that she is having the old house torn down Gabriella goes to visit it one last time. Its in her mothers old room that she discovers a box with her mothers things and one of these things is a diary.

Gabriella begins to read it and she realizes that what she thought was true is actually a lie. How will she react to the diary and its secrets? Gabriella is consumed by her mother’s diary and her secret that she sets out to uncover the truth.

Just before finding the diary Gabrielle crashes a party with her cousin and his friends. In her quest to find the bathroom she is looking around the house and stumbles into a room

Ooooooh, she says out loud, looking around her at rows and rows and rows of
books. A library.

A library with old-world cherry wood floors and Persian throw rugs that jar
with the glinting marble stairs.

She almost giggles. These people actually read?

Sounds like my dream room.

Its here that she meets Angel and falls in love. Although they are similar in ways they are so different. One of the things that draws her to him is he is sort of like the bad boy but he’s not. He is making an honest living dispute the fact his father is in prison for money laundering. He is always surrounded by body guards as there are always people wanting to get to him because of who is. Is he really like his father or is he legit with his business dealings?

If you haven’t read the book yet then you should it was good. I enjoyed reading. I am sure I would have enjoyed it just the same had I not heard this interview.

I had to include this picture with the post because Leila said that Angel was based on Enrique.

So it was really nice reading the book and seeing Enrique in Angel’s place. We got to meet Enrique when he came to a suburb of Montreal in 2007. He was in town promoting his last cd. Michael is just as much of a fan as I am.

I honestly didn’t think we would actually get this close to him considering the line up when we got there but thankfully someone heard my prayers because we meet this really nice lady with her daughter and friend. When the line started moving we got separated and this other girl let us get in beside her so that we were at the window to see him and as the line started moving we met up with that lady again and she said that we were with them (to the guard) and we were actually the last ones in to get autographs and pictures.

Once we got in Enrique was extremely happy that he got to meet Michael cause he kept looking at him the whole time and a few times he came to the window to wave with Michael.

This book was provided for review by Hachette. Thanks to Miriam at HBG for sending this to me.