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My Name is Emilia del Valle is vintage Isabel Allende—lush, sweeping, and utterly addictive. But it’s also refreshingly bold. Emilia is a whip-smart heroine who barrels through 19th-century expectations like a runaway press.
Born illegitimately to an Irish nun and a Chilean aristocrat, Emilia grows up defying convention. Her journey from dime store novelist to war correspondent is gripping enough, but it’s the layers beneath—the fractured family ties, the search for identity, the slow-burning love story with fellow journalist Eric Whelan—that give the novel its heart.
The battlefield scenes are vivid and unsparing, told through Emilia’s clear-eyed reporting. The horrors of war don’t overshadow the personal stakes, especially as she uncovers long-buried secrets about her father and her roots.
While I admired her guts and grit, I found myself wishing for more of her inner world. Even so, this is the kind of historical fiction that pulls you in and doesn’t let go. With rich characters, surprising turns, and Allende’s signature lyrical prose, Emilia del Valle might just be my favorite Allende novel yet.
** Thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for a review copy. The opinions are my own.