In the Time of the Butterflies

I’m not even going to lie when I first heard the gist of this book I immediately knew it was something that deserved to be on this list. To say I was stoked to read it is an understatement. Without giving too much away, ITTOTB is a fictional story about the real-life Maribal sisters. When I did a little digging about them I was onboard, I was about it and I couldn’t wait to know more.

For those of you like me, who know a disappointing amount of Latinx history; the Mirabal sisters were four Dominican sisters, Patria, Minerva, María Teresa, and Dedé, who opposed the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo (El Jefe) and were involved in clandestine activities against his regime. Three of the four sisters (Patria, Minerva, and María Teresa) were assassinated by the regime, turning them into symbols of popular and feminist resistance.

This novel, although fictional tells their story. What I loved about this book is that it tells the story from point of view from each of the sisters. Initially this took me a second to follow, but once I was able to see what the author was doing I dove right in. Obviously history leads you to know how this story ends, but to be totally honest this is where I think this book fell short, and that may be attributed to the fact that a reader already knows what to anticipate. All in all I would definitely recommend this read.