The Cuban Daughter (The Lost Daughters)
1950. When Esmeralda Diaz meets Christopher Dutton, she is accompanying her father, a widowed Cuban sugar magnate, on a business trip to London. Their attraction is instant, and when Christopher follows her to Havana, she hopes they might have a future, despite her father’s wish for her to marry a Cuban boy.
Present day, London. Claudia never knew her late grandmother had been adopted from a home for unmarried mothers until she inherits a box containing nothing but the Diaz family crest and a business card. Her research takes her to Havana, where she meets talented chef Mateo, who also has a link with the Diaz family. Their attraction is instant, but do they have a future together, and can they find out the truth about her grandmother’s past?
This is the second of a series with a similar premise to Lucinda Riley’s Seven Sisters books, but since each novel is about a different set of characters, I suspect it doesn’t matter what order they are read in. I had high hopes when I began this novel, but unfortunately Lane’s characterisation is weak. The present-day sections work reasonably well (though there’s a lot of reiteration of information we already know, and Claudia isn’t exactly a proactive heroine, relying instead on coincidentally meeting people who know people who know people who know something about the Diaz family).
However, the character of Christopher is so undeveloped that all we really know about him is that he’s good-looking and his one topic of conversation is how beautiful Esmeralda is, so it’s difficult to believe that even a naïve teenager would be willing to give up her family and everything she knows for his sake. Similarly, when Esmeralda talks to her younger sisters, they sound like mature women rather than excitable teenagers. Disappointing.
