This novella, to be published on 2 May, is the latest work from Cuban writer, Zoé Valdés. A prolific writer, with 19 books to her name, Valdés has been called 'the Madonna of Cuban literature'. This book has certainly piqued my interest in her previous novels.

It is not a romance novel, as the title suggests, but rather a short tale of Castro's Cuba and how teenager, Zé, and her family respond to Zé's pregnancy after she has a fling with a visiting Greek cabin boy.

In 144 pages we get a snapshot of how Zé follows her love of Greek culture to provide a better life for herself and her son, supported by her mother, aunt and the local brothel owner. It's a promising story of 'passion, endurance and hope', and while i really enjoyed it, it falls short - literally. I feel like I have read a vignette of what could be a great historical fiction novel of a family saga, full of quirky and loving characters. i wanted so much more.

If you are looking for a quick and enjoyable read, I still recommend this.

"...𝙸 𝚐𝚘𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚠𝚒𝚗𝚎 𝚞𝚗𝚍𝚎𝚛 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚝𝚊𝚋𝚕𝚎. 𝙸 𝚘𝚗𝚕𝚢 𝚍𝚛𝚒𝚗𝚔 𝚒𝚝 𝚘𝚗 𝚒𝚖𝚙𝚘𝚛𝚝𝚊𝚗𝚝 𝚘𝚌𝚌𝚊𝚜𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚜.

𝚂𝚘, 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚗𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝚍𝚛𝚒𝚗𝚔?

𝙾𝚏 𝚌𝚘𝚞𝚛𝚜𝚎, 𝙸 𝚍𝚛𝚒𝚗𝚔! 𝙴𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚢 𝚖𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝 𝙸 𝚎𝚡𝚒𝚜𝚝 𝚒𝚜 𝚊𝚗 𝚒𝚖𝚙𝚘𝚛𝚝𝚊𝚗𝚝 𝚘𝚌𝚌𝚊𝚜𝚒𝚘𝚗...🥂

Thanks to #netgalley and @skyhorsepub for the e-arc in return for an honest review.

A quick read as a novella and a subtle way of expressing the hardship of life in Cuba while exploring Zé's journey through motherhood. The jumps through time are mostly easy to follow but I can see that being an issue for other readers. A beautiful story of a mother's love for her child.

A Greek Love is just that, a book filled with love for a Greek sailor, Greece and its culture and a son born to a Greek sailor. Love is certainly the theme, through trauma, heartache, and loss.

Ze is a young girl living in Cuba who finds herself pregnant, the father a young Greek sailor who has already sailed away from Cuba with no idea he has left a child behind. The story follows Ze and her family through her pregnancy to old age where she and her child reunite with the loved Greek sailor.

This was a very quick and beautiful read. It does have moments that are difficult to read and could use a trigger warning for domestic violence.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

A Greek Love is a novella about contemporary Cuba, as much as it is about a prodigious musician of mixed heritage and the women who raised him; it’s about stars-crossed young lovers and the political and social implications in a country warped by ideological madness.

Valdez has perfectly conveyed the political paranoia of the seventies and eighties in Cuban society, and the tumultuous flux of the nineties and beyond. The political commentary is spot on, though at times feels heavy handed in an otherwise featherweight novella. Valdez has perfectly captured the decadence and hypocrisy of the Castro regime and its minions, their damage to Cuba’s social fabric and the erosion of family values, Cubans’ Faustian pact of aligning with the system in public and criticizing it in private.

This translation into English of Zoe Valdez’s novella magically captures the essence and the richness of the Spanish language original in such a way that I felt I was reading the original. Masterfully done by both the author and the translator!

Disclaimer: The publisher provided me with a digital ARC, via Netgalley, in exchange for my honest opinion.

- thank you to netgalley and the publisher for an arc to review!

- the story was short, lackluster, and needed a lot more development. plus, the writing style felt childish and plain, which really soured my interest in reading this arc.

I received this eARC from NetGalley and the publisher in return for an honest review.

This is neither a love story or a novel: at least it’s not a romantic love story. It is too short to be a novel; it’s a novella.

The length hinders what could have been a fascinating story. A young, single mother with an extended and found family with Cuban and Greek locations, and the political component all had potential. But it was told instead of developing a full, complex story, which also shortchanged what could have been an impactful ending: the only part that was really played out across the pages rather than being told.

Thanks to NetGalley and Skyhorse Publishing for access to this ARC. I am auto-approved for Skyhorse and all opinions expressed are my own.

A Cuban teen finds herself pregnant with a Greek sailor's baby. Years later, their son becomes a successful musician who wants to take his mother to Greece to meet his biological father.

This was a novella that was quick and easy to read. It addresses the viewpoints of Cubans towards outsiders, specifically their relationship and views towards Greeks. The chapters are not necessarily in chronological order but I never felt confused as to the context of the storyline.

Lovely cover too!


Expected Publication Date 02/05/23
Goodreads Review Published 29/03/23


#AGreekLove #NetGalley.

A novella set in Cuba. Beginning set in the 70s, Ze is a young woman pregnant by a Greek sailor. When she tells her parents her father viciously beats her and her mother who was trying to protect her. The women move away and Ze has her son, Petros. It’s well written and a quick read.

A Greek Love is a book about given up who you are and go through all the ups and downs for the love of your life. It’s a simple novel, rich with the Cubans experiences living in a authoritarian goverment that makes the smallest situations, viewing from our point of view, are extreme worrying subject: like a teenage love fling that results in a baby of a foreigner dad.

Besides that, this books talks about love, where most of the times you never felt truly loved, but was always the one doing the loving has our character Zé would say, and the women the supported her soon after see discovered that she was pregnant after her fling with a greek cabin boy.

From this romantic, maternal and familiar love, Petros is born and raised to become a famous and international musician, thanks to the strengh of the women who raised him with Zé, but mostly because of the influences of the men of their lives that have power within the communist party. He is the one who will open the possibilites to his mother travel to Greece and meet again her first love.

This novel written by the cuban Zoé Valdés has a fluid reading rhythm that holds to you from the first page. If you have the curiosity about how is like to live in Cuba - as a cuban woman - this books narrates brevely about machism and authoritarianism from a female point of view. It’s a book that if was written with more pages, I surely would like to read too.

It’s the first book I’ve read from the author, for sure I will be reading the others. Thank you NetGalley and Skyhorse Publishing for this ARC and the experience of reading it!

An interesting novel about how one event can change and form a person's life, while the same event lives in the memory of another very differently. Zé's life, and not only her but her family's life too, is defined by Zé's one big love. This story is a prime example of a woman's integrity.

Beautiful writing, delicate human relations and a complete lack of clichés.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Skyhorse Publishing for an ARC.

A wonderful story of Ze, a teenager in Cuba's "gray years" who ends up pregnant by a Greek sailor.
Ranging from an abusive father to being a single mother and persevering through invisibility, the only thing I found this novella lacked was more of Ze's story. I would have easily read 300 more pages. So many aspects of Ze's life were presented, but only briefly. I would have loved this story in the scope of a novel.

What I would drink while reading this book:
Albariño

This is so beautifully written. I'm a lover of books set in both Cuba and Greece so I adored every moment of this one. Ze was such a great character and her story will stick with me for a long time.

Havana in the 1970s: There is a rhythm to daily life, and a party (or Party) line to follow. For Zé, though, life promises something else—and so it is at the beginning of the book that she finds herself telling her parents that she is pregnant.

That the father is a Greek sailor is, in Havana, scandalous—it would be one thing for Zé to fall for a Soviet, but a Greek? That's something else entirely. And so Zé is sent away to raise her child in a city with fewer prying eyes, and her life changes course. Zé dreams of a different life, sometimes, but it isn't the one you might expect—she doesn't so much dream of escaping to the West as she imagines a life in Cuba in which her father is less volatile, the father of her child is still in Cuba, and the rooms don't all run the risk of being bugged.

This is probably a 3.5-star read for me—a little too much telling in places, a little too much exposition through dialogue. But I have read precious little about life in Cuba, and even less about life in Cuba in the 70s. Zé's life is not an easy one: her family lives in a tenement, her father is abusive, and because this is the status quo, the people around them turn a blind eye. She knows enough to dream of more, but she is also reluctant to see her family broken up, to lose the connection to her father. I love the ambivalence—she knows that, abroad, she'd have more opportunities and likely live a happier life, but she can also see how much she'd be leaving behind, and what it would mean for the people she loves.

The author's Wikipedia page is fairly fascinating in its own right, and I may have to seek out some more of her work, which apparently often pulls from her own life.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

As a Cuban-American reader whose family is from Matanzas (and whose husband was born there and lived there until we were married), I was very excited to read A Greek Love, and this gem of a novella did not disappoint. Not only does Zoé Valdés perfectly convey life in Cuba, but she renders Zé's story in a lyrical, melancholic way that will stay with me long after turning the last page. I particularly enjoyed the beautiful final pages of the novel, which connect Zé's modern-day life to her teenage experiences at the beginning of the novel.

This is a great little gem for anyone looking to read a novel by a Cuban writer, or truly anybody looking to read a lovely novella.

Thank you to Arcade and NetGalley for a free review copy in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

This was such a great book made up of heart, courage and family- so many of the integral makings of a truly fabulous read!

Despite the title, this is less of a love story and more a brief view into Cuba, with a bit of Greek/Cuban relations thrown in. The story highlights the strength and growth that can be gained if women support one another. It is a short read, which brings. a teenager in Cuba’s “gray years” who ends up pregnant by a Greek sailor. Ranging from an abusive father to being a single mother and persevering through invisibility, though it lacked more information of Zé’s story.

Looking for a peek into Cuban politics and culture? Then check out A Greek Love, which tells the story of Zé, a teenager who becomes pregnant after a brief affair with a Greek ship captain's son. After he sails away, Zé is left alone to face the consequences, and her father violently throws her out of her home. She ends up leaving Havana to raise her son in Matanzas, surrounded by a supportive group of women. Later, Zé (who is now a Greek scholar) and her grownup son (who is a world famous musician) seek permission from the communist government to travel to Greece for a concert and to find her lost love.

This beautifully-written novella packs so much into so few pages! I loved the peek into Cuban life, as well as all the lovely descriptive details the author included, although it was hard to connect with the characters in such a short book. Let's just say I was definitely left wanting more (in a good way). This book also piqued my interest in seeking out more Cuban authors.

“ The kids didn’t cry. Children on That Island are tamed, broken like timorous little beasts of burden, trained, or rather domesticated, from the cradle. Scenes like this teach them from an early age that the best thing to do is to keep their mouths shut.”

There were so many moments throughout the book that Zoe Valdez captured in such a beautiful way the tyranny, endurance & pure Love for Cuba.

This novel takes starts in the Cuba of the 70s, a communist Cuba. Ze’s a 16 year old who felt in love with the son of a Greek sailor/captain. As a result she becomes pregnant. This acts was the lowest a young Cuban girl could do to being shame and scandal to her family. You see, for a Cuban to be in love or go as far as to have a child with a foreigner is the definition of Betraying TU PATRIA!

As Ze gives her father the news, her father acts in rage and beats her up badly.. her mother intervene and she is also attacked, because Acts of violence is the norm in Cuba. It’s a way of expressing all the frustrations thanks to being an oppressed country. It’s also a reminder of how poorly women were and continue to be treated.

“ A man would kill a woman out of jealousy, and not a single mention of the unfortunate event would appear in the papers.”

So, as they’re able to scape Ze’s father grip, Ze, her mother Isabel run away from their home into the safety of “The Greek whore” home OSIRIS. Who will turn out to be an incredible ally and the meaning of Love & Found Family.

This story was bitter sweet to read, first you have a young women who has to endure not just an abusive father but also a broken heart. A sense of giving yourself completely to love but not being able to receive it back. To dedicate your life to your first love and make that your entire personality to then have to come to your full circle moment and realize that you have lived in the past for the best years of your life…

If you are in for a Love story about Love, Sacrifices, endurance and hope, then this one is for you.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this novel for an exchange of a honest review.

This book was enjoyable, but it left me wanting a little more. That being said, I could not put it down and read it in a day.

I would like to keep reading the author’s backlist.

The premise of this story was promising: a young
Cuban woman becomes pregnant by a Greek sailor and is left to raise their son with the help of various friends and family. I loved the descriptions of the cities, they were very beautiful. It also painted a vivid picture of life in Cuba and the struggles it's citizens faced. I didn't know much about that period so it was a welcome education. Ultimately though, the story didn't grip me. It felt stilted and the dialogue was a bit stiff.