A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow, by Laura Taylor Namey, is a book that demands to be eaten with a snack -- and of course, a cuppa. When Lila Reyes experiences a trio of tragedies one right after another, her erratic behavior causes her parents and beloved older sister to pack her up for a summer staying with family in England. Lila, furious, tries to resist finding anything to love in this new town, but finds herself drawn in by Orion, seller of tea and soon to become tour guide for Lila's stay in England.

A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow mostly follows relatively expected beats, not doing anything new or revolutionary with the genre, even as it hits those beats very well. Lila is a wonderful protagonist, in that she feels like an actual human being. She is arrogant, for good reason it seems, about her baking, and headstrong to the point of disrupting her relationships at times. She is also a character the reader will find themselves rooting for, as she so clearly wants to do what is best not just for herself, but for her family and friends as well.

Where the novel really shines are the moments between the story, with beautiful little pieces of writing about immigrating and moving far away from family, about how to be true to yourself while being good to those around you, and about what to do when the plans you've made for yourself your whole life no longer fit just right.

Settle in with a pastry and a good cup of tea, and enjoy this cozy, sweet, at times heart aching story, one that is sure to make you want to pack up and move to England -- or maybe Miami.

Today I’m coming to you with the most special treat of a book: Laura Taylor Namey’s YA contemporary A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea & Tomorrow.

Told in writing that’s often lyrical, ACGGtTaT is both a story of grief & celebration as Lila Reyes copes with suffering three recent big losses & being sent away from the loving arms of her family to live in Hampshire, England for a summer.

After her beloved Abuelita dies—the woman who taught Lila how to bake—& her long-time boyfriend breaks up with her, & her best friend changes their graduation plans & moves to Africa for work instead, Lila is unmoored. Her protective, loving family decides that the best thing for her is a temporary new environment.

Lila leaves Miami, her family bakery, & her family (internally) screaming. But spending time with some of her other family in England, running the kitchen in their inn, & becoming friends with the local tea shop owner’s son, Orion Maxwell, make her see that her life & heart can follow a new map .

This beautiful book gives such love to place whether it’s Miami or England. Vivid descriptions; characters who delight in the world around them & the things they create; & food-rich scenes—mostly of Lila baking Cuban and/or English recipes—make for a sensory feast.

Lila’s confidence is inspiring & her relationship with Orion, their friendship that doesn’t stay just a friendship, is so sweet & banter-filled. While I did have a slight problem with the romantic timing of it all—esp given that Lila had just gotten out of a 3 yr relationship—her relationship with Orion moves so slowly, so gradually, that I was okay with it. And honestly, they’re so great together. So.

This lovely contemporary gave my heart the boost it needed last week. I highly recommend it & I’ll be singing its praises for a while into the future.

5⭐️. Thanks to Simon & Schuster and Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own.

Between spring and graduation, seventeen-year-old superstar Cuban cook Lila Reyes suffers the trifecta of pain: her abuela dies, her beloved boyfriend dumps her, and her best friend abandons her. In an effort to protect her mental health, her family sends her to Winchester, England. Lila begrudgingly boards the plane, angry that she’s forced to leave behind everything she’s ever known. Already vowing to hate England, Lila doesn’t expect to run into tea maker and superstition-collector Orion. With only three months in England and a looming plane ticket home, Lila has to decide between her past and her future, Miami or Winchester, her family or a new love.

Full of delicious-sounding Cuban cooking, my stomach growled almost the entire time I read this book. It’s a fairly light and quick read with some heavy topics wrapped in fun references to Cuban culture. Unfortunately, I was disappointed by the execution of this high-spirited contemporary romance. I got off on the wrong foot with Lila from the very beginning by her annoyingly whiny attitude about her trip to England and her sometimes immature actions. However, I absolutely fell in love with Orion’s character. Sweet, thoughtful, and a lover of tea, it was fun to follow his journey throughout the story. Overall, it was a delectable read, but not my favorite contemporary novel I’ve read as of late.

(Pine Reads Review would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for providing us with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Any quotes are taken from an advanced copy and may be subject to change upon final publication.)

I am very much here for cute stories written from different voices. This qualifies, and I'm glad to have been able to read an early copy!

What joy to get lost in England along with Lila as she finds herself and who she wants to become. While it was tropey, it was in the best way. Like a warm hug or a cup of tea, I found solace in the conflict, resolutions, joys, and romance. It was a great escapist fiction to snuggle into. I ended the book feeling hopeful and uplifted. It wasn't strictly a romance. Laura Namey dives into grief, friendship evolution and loss, emerging adulthood, and scrumptious food. Thanks to Netgalley and Atheneum Books for Young Readers for giving me the privilege of reading this title early during quite a stressful time in my life (and historically too no less).

This book was such a comforting and heart-warming read. Reading this book felt like being hugged by Orion: sweet, and I wish it ould last forever. I loved reading Lila's story as she struggled through every form of heartbreak there is while trying to pick up all of the pieces. The most devastating loss for her was her grandmother's death, which pulled at my heartstrings. You could feel the grief in her words and actions but also how she was able to honor her grandmother's memory and keep her spirit alive through her stories and her cooking. The food and cooking in this book is easily a favorite of mine: incorporating some of my favorite dishes and bringing everyone together. The heart of this book is on coping with loss but it's done in a light-hearted way, showing that there's always an opportunity to forge new connections while also remembering the ones you've lost. The cast of the tight-knit family and a new group of friends was perfect with fully-realized and realistic characters. I adored this book with all my heart.

I really love this author's writing. She has a way of weaving words that make her stories feel like they are full of life and breathing off of the page. This particular title was of interest to me because of the cultural aspect and I was super excited to dive in.

And it didn't disappoint! I found myself enveloped in the story, despite the fact that it was somewhat mundane. I read this in one sitting, so it was a nice contemporary to break up a ton of fantasy reading. I find that when I throw in a contemporary, I am pleasantly surprised.

I read Library of lost Things and was blown away by the mental illness rep. It was so important to have and the rep in this is just as important. I highly recommend this title and I absolutely love the cover art, too. I hope this makes people cover buy and fall in love with the story!

Ever wish a book would have come out when you were years younger? That’s how I’m currently feeling while reading this charming little novel by Laura Taylor Namey. A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea and Tomorrow follows the story of Lila Reyes as she traverses the streets of England while recovering from a trifecta of painful life-altering events. Her abuela has just passed away, her best friend decided to abandon their college plans, and her boyfriend dumped her. Her year sounds a lot like 2020. I wouldn’t call it a recipe for success.
—
The reason I wish this book had come out years ago is because I sincerely wish something this cute, by an Own Voices author would have been around when I was a teen. Perhaps there was, but I didn’t know of it?
As an adult, it’s a tad difficult to relate to, though fun to stand back and admire with a familiar nostalgia. As a Chicana, it rings with certain truths that only Spanish speaking people would find relatable.
There are sweet moments and heartbreaking ones. A mix of awkward teen cringe and the growing pains that come along with getting older.
—
I found myself transported back into adolescence for a moment and I was reminded of the tender moments we all face with family, friendship, and love.
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A word of caution, this book contains far too much pasteles for an empty stomach. If you haven’t had lunch, be sure to have a bite before the talk of flan and pastelitos de guayaba comes into play. 😋🍮🍰
Unfortunately I could not procure any guava paste, but I did make some delicious spiced scones with pumpkin glaze to enjoy with my tea.
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If you’re looking for a light-hearted and sentimental read, you’ll find it in A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea and Tomorrow. 💞✨

Actual rating 4.5

*ARC provided by the author for an honest review*
Ugh you guys 😓
I wanted to love this book SO bad I just... didn’t.
DNFed at 61%

Here are the things I loved:
- the writing is actually really beautiful. The author has a way of saying things that is just beautiful and touches the soul.
- the Cuban food and representation in this book is so amazing. Made me miss my abuela and also her cooking.
- I was able to feel for the main character Lila because I just felt sad for her.

Here are the things I didn’t love:
- I was hoping the romance would be kinda teen angsty but it wasn’t. Honestly it was kind of boring and I wasn’t even really rooting for the two characters to come together.
- it was just boring. Nothing was really happening in the book and so I lost interest so quickly. I slowed down majorly at 45 % and then it took me 2 weeks to read 15% more. I just lost interest.

I feel like objectively this is a good book that a teen would love and very “YA”. I just was so bored and I didn’t want to force myself to finish it and then give it a bad rating. So I DNFed it and am not rating it.

I think this could be a good book but it’s just not for me right now. If you love coming of age stories, and YA, then I would highly recommend this book when it publishes!

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3533959005

Lila Reyes has had a difficult time dealing with loss. Her grandmother, her boyfriend, and her best friend have all left her and, in an attempt to escape her feelings, she worries her family and forces them to send her to England to spend the summer with her cousin, Cate. No matter how much she resists, she finds herself in the kitchen of the inn that Cate owns, doing what she does best, baking. On her first day in the kitchen, she encounters Orion Maxwell, a proper British boy who pushes her boundaries and eventually becomes her unofficial tour guide around town. As Lila bakes, runs, and explores, she finds herself healing in ways she never thought possible. But her legacy is in Miami, with her family bakery, but can England and Orion Maxwell heal her enough to make her stay? Filled with whimsical writing and a teenager who finds herself in the most unexpected way, Lilas story transports the reader to the English countryside in a whirlwind of new and old friendships and the importance of self love.

Full of food, family, and feeling, this book follows a young Cuban girl as she is sent to England by her family to deal with her grief. This books is a dream for food-lovers as a love for food fills every page and the author inserts different recipe styles in the writing. This is a sweet and compelling coming of age story, with a perfect atmosphere.

"A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow" is a coming of age book that will delight readers! It was captivating right from the beginning. The story follows Lila, recently graduated from high school and struggling with three big losses: her best friend, her boyfriend, and her beloved Abuela, who taught her everything she knows about cooking. In order to help her deal, her family sends her away from Miami to live with her aunt in England. Anyone, adult or teen, who has ever struggled with identity or loss will fall in love with not only the diverse cast of characters, but with this story of friendship, love, and deciding which dreams are worth the effort.

This was just so cute & adorable. I loved reading about Lila and her journey to England and the baking..oh my goodness, I loved every second of learning about baking and Cuban food.
The romance and friendship was adorable and I enjoyed it. The setting of England was the cream on the cake as well!
Overall this was cute and sweet...everything I look for in a Ya Contemporary.

5/5 stars

What an enchanting book. The first thing I want to talk about in this review is the writing style. It's borderline mystical, as rich and sweet as the desserts and delicacies Laura Taylor Namey describes. The main character, Lila, is a baker, and we spend a lot of time with her in the kitchen, and Namey does an excellent job of describing in a delectable manner all the Cuban foods Lila is baking. The descriptions were <i> on point </i> to a degree that I'd love to take a masterclass from Namey on how to describe people, places, foods, and things in such a manner.

This book made me want to hop a plane to England immediately, it made me want to start baking, it even made me want to take up running (which I've never enjoyed, not even when running track). It does an excellent job of painting verbal pictures and making you wish you could be there.

You know what else was darling? Orion, and his friend group (especially Jules and Remy), and the relationships we see Lila develop with all of them over her summer in England.

I loved that there was a small mystery but that it never derailed the main focus of the book, which was Lila's relationship with Orion and her family in Winchester.

Ultimately this book is about figuring out your future and maybe even redefining it, which I think is such a powerful message to learn even as a 27-year-old and I am so excited for this book to land in the world. Highly recommend!

Be prepared to be hungry while reading this book!

A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow is so much more than a cute romance. It's a book about family, loss and grief, culture, and yes, love.

Lila had a trifecta of bad things that happened to her and she's not dealing well. Her Abuela died suddenly, her boyfriend broke up with her right before prom, and her best friend decided to cancel their plans and leave the country. Everything is messed up and Lila has trouble grieving. After she runs to exhaustion, her parents decide to send her to England for the summer. She has family there that own and inn and she'll be staying with them. Lila does not want to leave Miami and everything she knows. Lila is loyal to Miami. It's everything to her and she knows she can't be happy anywhere else. Especially England where it's chilly and rainy. She tries to avoid everything in the beginning, just sleeping and then a bit of running. But what saves Lila is the kitchen at the inn. Cate lets her work with Polly, who resists help, preparing baked goods for the inn. Lila is at home in the kitchen. Baking makes her happy in ways other things don't.

Lila meets a small group of people including a boy, Orion. Somehow, these teens break through and Lila starts opening up to them. Orion becomes her tour guide. He's able to show her that she can love England while still loving Miami. It's hard to be away from her family, but Lila starts to create a life for herself away from home. She is still conflicted between loyalty to her family and what she may actually want for her own life.

The characters are the stand out in the book. I adored Orion. Jules was a favorite. I loved the locations and descriptions. The food sounded amazing. I just really enjoyed this book.

I gave this book 4 stars. Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for my review copy.

Warnings for grief, dementia, an older teen hitting on a young teen, and loss.

A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea and Tomorrow is the perfect recipe of all things I love in a YA book: a big, loving Latinx family, absolutely mouth-watering depictions of food, and a summer adventure in Europe. Following Lila, a recent high school graduate who has big plans to run her family’s Cuban bakery after graduation, the story takes an unexpected turn when Lila’s well-intentioned family sends her to England for the summer to recover from multiple heartbreaks and a sense of grief she can’t (quite literally) outrun.

At first I was a bit apprehensive about Lila’s journey to England, as I was worried I’d miss out on the vibrant Miami setting and Latinx family representation with Lila so far from her home. However, Miami itself is almost a character in this story, Lila’s city as much a a true love to her as any romantic partner. I loved how even as Lila was exploring new sides of herself in England, her heart was never far from her mother, father, and sister in Miami, as well as her colorful neighborhood, gossipy neighbors, and supportive customers. Yet juxtaposed against Lila’s love for Miami was her growing acceptance of the English countryside, which depicted a different type of beauty that Lila learned to appreciate. I loved exploring the endless green valleys with Lila, seeing her merge her beloved Cuban recipes with traditional English ones, and discovering new friendships with a very different dynamic that those she had back in the States. A Cuban Girl’s Guide is very much a coming of age story and one that emphasizes sometimes you need to leave behind who you think you are to discover who you really are.

Throughout the course of the story, Lila is dealing with her trifecta of loss, with the death of her beloved Abuela, the breakup with her boyfriend, and a falling out with her childhood best friend all coinciding with each other and serving as a catalyst to push Lila into behaviors that cause her to be sent away for the summer. While these are a lot of issues to have one protagonist work through in one contemporary YA novel, it was clear that they were all interconnected and Lila yet had to learn how to grieve each relationship and move on from it in its own way. I especially appreciated how in many ways each trauma was treated with equal weight, even if the circumstances were different. In particular, the exploration of a formative female friendship changing and disintegrating was hard to read but something I was ultimately glad was explored, as friendship breakups can be especially painful as a teen but so often are overshadowed by other kinds of relationship losses.

Other Elements I Enjoyed:

-The cosmic correlations between Orion and Estrellita.
-How the Spanish language was woven throughout the narrative to showcase how important it was to Lila and wasn’t always explained- it felt so natural.
-All of the food descriptions! My mouth was quite close to watering reading about both the amazing Cuban pastries Lila would make in the bakery every morning along with the savory meals she would treat her friends too. I also loved that for Lila, showing her love and problem solving was often done through the act of cooking. Cooking and baking weren’t just her skills but her way of expressing herself, especially when she couldn’t verbally.
-Tea tasting at the Maxwell’s tea shop.
-Lila’s strong relationship with her parents and sister that continues to persist, even when she is angry and resentful at them.
- An overall very wholesome romantic plot.

Overall: A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea and Tomorrow is a sweet coming of age story that merges two very different locations and cultures to help the protagonist find her way. With an emphasis on loss being a part of growth, I found this contemporary novel to pack more of an emotional punch than expected.

Laura Taylor Namey continues to showcase her ability to present sensitive themes to YA readers while still making them feel like they’re wrapped in a warm hug. In A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea and Tomorrow, issues of loss, family, and identity are presented in accessible and age-appropriate ways that young readers will engage with and love. A fair warning, though: one should expect to develop a strong craving for Cuban food while reading this phenomenal book. Highly recommended!

I am in love with this sweet book! It was the coziest read, like getting a hug, drinking hot tea, and listening to Taylor Swift's song "cardigan" all at once. I loved seeing Lila's journey through heartbreak and grief to hope and love. And Orion was the sweetest love interest ever! Taylor's beautiful writing and this adorable story left me feeling warm and content and I can't wait to recommend it to more readers.

3.5 stars

This is a sweet book, literally and figuratively.

When the novel starts, readers learn that the m.c. is poorly managing her grief over several losses: her abuela, best friend, and boyfriend. These all happen in a short period of time, and when she increasingly struggles, her family sends her from Miami to stay with extended family an hour outside of London. That's where she puts her abuela-instilled culinary skills to use, meets a boy, mentors a young woman, and makes a concerted effort to reclaim her life.

The descriptions of food in this novel...I was hungry the whole time I read. This is not a complaint.

While I really enjoyed all of the characters in this piece, at times, I found the plot a little bit slower than I'd have liked. The resolution is also a touch cleaner than I'd prefer. That noted, I will absolutely be back for more from this author and would recommend this to folks looking for a manageable look at grief, loss, and rebuilding.

I read my first book by this author at the beginning of this year. It was nicely written and I enjoyed the characters and the messages that were included. Obviously when I found out about her new book, I knew I needed to read it. The cover is also amazing!

Lila is dealing with a lot from the beginning. Her life feels like it’s falling apart from all directions. It was easy to see myself in her from when I was younger and dealing with losing friends and heartbreak. I lost my grandma a year ago and boy did I really feel the pain for Lila on that subject! It’s hard losing someone that helped mold you into who you are.

Even through all that and being sent to another country, she tries to put her life together one step at a time, or really, one recipe at a time. Trust me, this book will make you hungry while reading!

The relationship between her and Orion was super cute and I loved reading about them. He teaches her many things about life along the way through his own struggles. I wasn’t sure how this book would end with them being from different places but the author knocked the ending out of the park! I may have cried a bit, haha. (I also cried before that but who’s counting. I was clearly emotional through the book. 😂)

There are so many great messages throughout about relationships, change, and figuring out how to piece back your life when it’s crumbling down. Don’t worry, it also has it’s funny moments too!

There is so much I would like to say about this book but I feel like my words just wouldn’t do it justice. The author once again wrote a book I thoroughly enjoyed and I can’t wait to see what else she writes!

If you haven’t added this to your tbr, I’d definitely recommend.