Book Review: A Tall Dark Trouble by Vanessa Montalban

Despite being identical twins, the Sanchez sisters have wildly different personalities. The elder sister Lela is quiet and calm, while younger Delfi is brash and ready to break both rules and hearts. While the sisters have always had an uncanny ability to sense emotions and make “lucky” guesses, turning eighteen has kicked their paranormal powers into overdrive. Lela can touch an object and instantly have visions of any strong memory attached to it. Delfi’s emotional perceptiveness manifests as different flavors on her tongue. The young women have been trying to figure out how to master their abilities so they’re not blindsided by unexpected triggers, but knowledge is unfortunately difficult for them to find in 2016 Miami.

It doesn’t help that their immigrant mother is altogether disapproving of the twins doing anything beyond pretending that their extrasensory abilities don’t exist. As Delfi narrates:

To Mami, our intuition, our visions, the shadows we see are unnatural. Something to be stifled and ignored.

 

I’ve always assumed Mami’s aversion comes from her experiences back in Cuba, from the bruja that cursed our family to live with a love that taints. It’s part of why she sacrificed everything to come to the US. But what happened to our dad, and my ex, is proof that when it comes to magic, you can’t really leave it all behind.

 

Running might be her thing, but it’s never been mine.

When the twins start having vivid nightmares about a blue-eyed woman in mortal danger, they know that neither running away from their abilities nor ignoring the dreams will save her. Feeling duty-bound to help the mysterious woman escape her fate, they begin trying to figure out who she is and where they can find her. They soon discover that the woman is being targeted by witch hunters, and that if they’re not careful, they’ll end up in the crosshairs, too.

The narrative switches between Lela and Delfi, but there are also compelling chapters from the point of view of a young woman named Anita. As a teenager in 1980s Cuba, she feels both stifled and unfairly privileged. The repressive regime makes it difficult for any person of conscience to live freely, but it’s even worse for Anita. Her mother is a well-known bruja, and one of the leaders of a sinister cult known as las Palomas:

The local communities of Afro-Cuban religious practitioners and Espiritistas disapproved of las Palomas because they believed the way that las Palomas channeled and controlled spirits as maldeados was a corrupted and twisted form of power, and that their practices painted all spiritualists in a bad light. And while under Castro’s regime, religious practitioners were forced to hide their faith, host their gatherings secretly in the confines of their homes or old abandoned building because of the government’s religious prohibitions, las Palomas were given an exemption because they were secretly and hypocritically sought out by el Comandante and his cabinet for magical protections.

Mama Orti expects Anita to embrace her own powers and be inducted into las Palomas when the time comes, but Anita has little interest in spending her life propping up the health and well-being of a regime she despises. When Anita’s brother Rafe begins making plans to defect, she eagerly joins him. Little does she suspect how this will kick off a tangle of misfortune and murder that will only grow thornier over the course of the next few decades, eventually ensnaring two unsuspecting teenage girls who seek only to do the right thing.

Despite how lukewarm I was over Anita’s character, and how much I was rooting for the much more engaging Lela and Delfi, I found myself most interested in the parts of this story set in 20th-century Cuba. The settings and action on the island felt vivid and absorbing, really bringing history to life. The modern day murder mystery had twists both magical and mundane, but Anita’s teenage struggles to escape both her mother and an oppressive government felt somehow more immediate and urgent than the chapters closer in time to the present.

Overall, this was a great look at little-known and understood systems of religious and magical practices, and how those might be translated to a modern urban fantasy setting. Vanessa Montalban deftly highlights those systems, linking them across two different but very much related times and places. This unique Young Adult thriller mixes the supernatural with reality-based criminal and political machinations, showing how historical actions can cast a long shadow over the present day.