Elisa is a young woman from a wealthy family, living in Cuba during Batista’s fall and Castro’s rise to power. She falls in love with a revolutionary and is dragged apart from him when her family is forced to leave for the United States.

Marisol is Elisa’s granddaughter who returns to Cuba to spread her grandmother’s ashes in the country she loved and never forgot. Next Year in Havana is told from from each woman’s point of view in each woman’s window of time. Is Marisol in a different Cuba or is it still the same Cuba that Elisa knew all those years ago?

I loved this book for the history of Cuba it contained. There were so many things I didn’t know about the Cuban struggle that the author explained. The story of love that was the central theme of the novel, however dragged on in many parts and seemed to me like the same story repeated only separated by a few decades.

This book is worth reading, everyone will get something out of it. And you will learn why so many Cubans living in the United States dream of Next Year in Havana.