Tell Me Something True-Leila Cobo

Tell Me Something True
Leila Cobo
Grand Central, Oct 2009, $13.99
ISBN: 9780446519366

Twenty-one year old Colombian-American Gabriella has been raised in both countries. Her father resides in Southern California as a successful movie producer while her maternal grandmother, who she visits every Christmas, lives in South America. Her late mother was never been part of her life except for a photo of Helena that Gabriella loves.

A piano prodigy, Gabriella finds her mother’s diary that shocks her; not just aboute her mom’s affair though that is a stunner when she always of Helena as an earth angel. At a Hollywood gala, Gabriella and affluent pop music promoter Angel Silva meet and are attracted to one another. However, she has some doubts because his father is a jailed drug trafficker. Still as she falls in love, Gabriella keeps looking into what happened to her mother who died in a plane crash just after she apparently had a torrid affair.

This is a violent bittersweet romance starring an intriguing heroine whose image of her parents and grandma collapses with the reading of her Mami’s diary. The truth is not as kind as the lie her love ones told her to shelter her from the transgressions of her Mami. Although at times too melodramatic especially when Angel enters Gabriella’s life, TELL ME SOMETHING TRUE is a fascinating family drama that asks readers whether lying to protect a child even an adult child from the tarnished truth about a deceased loved one is acceptable. Using true events like the plane crash in 1995 of a flight from Miami to Cali, Columbia as anchors to her tale, fans will enjoy Gabriella’s quest to learn who her Mami’s secret lover was and why her Mami was on the plane.

Harriet Klausner