Tell Me Something True

August 31, 2009
Cobo’s sweet debut novel is the story of two women—a mother and daughter—and the love affairs that irrevocably changed their lives. Gabriella, 21, is a piano prodigy raised by her wealthy grandmother in Colombia and her movie producer father in Los Angeles. Her mother, Helena, was a renowned photographer who died when Gabriella was four. When she attends a party in the Hollywood Hills, Gabriella meets Angel, the man of her dreams. There’s one catch: he’s a mobster. As Gabriella tries to reconcile her conflicted feelings toward Angel, she discovers her mother’s diary. Soon she is drawn into Helena’s secret life, one that involved a passionate love affair. Betrayed and confused, Gabriela tries to find her mother’s lover. But when her own romance begins to spiral out of control, Gabriella must come to terms with the fact that she’s very much her mother’s daughter. Cobo’s well-drawn characters help bolster the story when Gabriella’s tragic romance occasionally slides into melodrama. The smooth prose and authentic Colombian settings provide a unique spin to familiar territory.

August 15, 2009
In this indulgent romantic debut, half-American, half Colombian Gabriella discovers she and her mother share a taste for forbidden men.

High-flown description and sentiment, even the occasional serious theme (e.g., cross-cultural identity), do little to dress up Cobo's thin, implausible characters and storyline. Beautiful, rich Gabriella, who lost her mother Helena in a plane crash when she was four, spends her Christmases in Colombia at the home of her beautiful, rich grandmother. Twenty-one-year-old Gabriella's only worry is the pressure for perfection coming from her handsome, rich father, a filmmaker in L.A. But on her latest trip to South America, two things happen: first she finds Helena's diary, which reveals an adulterous affair, and then she falls for handsome, rich Angel Silva, the suave yet vulnerable son of a jailed Mafioso drug baron. (In case you hadn't noticed, all the protagonists here are gorgeous and wealthy.) Despite grandma's disapproval, Gabriella chooses not to resist Angel's advances. After all, she tells herself, he is not like his father; he despises drugs and makes his money as a pop promoter. (She manages to avoid the question of why Angel needs the protection of many bodyguards.) When the ecstatic couple is not together, Gabriella works on uncovering the truth about her mother, meeting Helena's lover and learning why she was on the plane that crashed. Cobo uses violence to push the plot forward as the story moves towards its predictable conclusion.

A soapy melodrama with poetic aspirations.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

September 1, 2009
Twentysomething classical pianist Gabriella Richard never really knew her mother. The striking Colombian beauty named Helena died in a plane crash when her daughter was four, leaving behind what Gabriella thought was an idyllic life married to Marcus, an American filmmaker in Beverly Hills. But on one of her annual trips to Colombia, Gabriella discovers a diary that offers a new and unsettling perspective on her mother. While she was married, Helena had an affair with a prominent Colombian, a relationship so passionate she was tempted to sacrifice everythingincluding custody of her daughter. While Gabriella ponders her mothers predicament, she finds herself in a precarious romantic entanglement of her own; shes falling head over heels for the son of a Colombian Mafioso. Can Gabriella fault her mothers transgressions when she, too, finds herself at the mercy of love? Cobo, a Colombia-born pianist and radio and television personality, dispenses her tale from two perspectivesmother and daughterin this slow-moving but poignant tale of truths hidden and laid bare.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)