3 out of 4 stars
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Something Happened in Spain is a Nonfiction book by Annie Bolton flavored with romance. You may have read some accounts of true crime-filled events from other countries, but this one is set in Spain particularly in the city of Marbella.
Nick Armand proposed to his beloved girlfriend Gabriella Daly-- a beautiful and free spirited teacher who wanted to attend a "Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL)" teaching program in Spain. She accepted the proposal, and everything was perfect until Nick told her what he really is -- an undercover detective set out to do another mission for a year which is coincidentally also in Spain. Gaby was shocked at this revelation and Nick knowing that it will save their relationship, gave her the space and time she needed to sort out her feelings, leaving her a promise to find her again. Gaby, not wanting to go back, went to Spain bringing everything with her. There she lived in a new home and new environment, trained in TEFL and got a new job, met plenty of new students turned friends, new acquaintances, new flings, and faced so many new obstacles while waiting for Nick to locate her. On one of her friend's party, she met her new love Jim which is both a plumber and an accountant. The two of them fell for each other leading to a proposal that she accepted and decided to forget about Nick. Everything seemed to be ideal-- a husband-to-be and a good-paying job. However, her stay in Spain wasn't at all perfect. An apartment full of cockroaches, murders, betrayals, drugs and all sort of unexpected things have been all around her, leaving her life utterly scarred in the end.
Written in a third person's point of view, readers will find themselves engrossed at the life of Gaby as she explore all the corners of Spain and the things in it. Although filled with romance, it showed the issues faced by the city of Marbella and the illicit activities happening there. Sex, drugs, money laundering, theft, kidnapping, murder, name it all. The author presented all of it in a creative way using a woman protagonist experiencing some of the crimes. Gaby found herself involved more than she wanted to in a complicated crime-filled environment of the city not finding a better way out of it. But despite of all Gaby's misfortunes, I enjoyed reading the book. There are plenty of characters (that i have trouble of remembering) but are all wonderful that i felt their genuine relationship with each other. There are also some chapters that shows Nick's situation that i really appreciate. It gave me an idea of detectives's complicated work and relationship with other police forces from other countries.
I also loved how the author introduced the wonderful places in Spain, from Seville to Marbella, to Puerto Banus and Estepona. This book reminds me of my own country Philippines. Yes, my country have all sort of crimes in every corner of it, but it doesn't mean you can't enjoy it nonetheless. Ms. Bolton is a Welsh, but it is evident that she liked Spain as of how she described it in the book. I wonder if she experienced these miserable things herself. Whether that is or isn't the case, i applaud the protagonist for her courage.
In the end, i would say that all countries have their flaws, and there are crimes everywhere. Whether you're in Spain, or in the Philippines, a tourist or a person looking for a place to permanently live in, a country's beauty will never be defined by crime rates and statistics.
I rate this book a 3 out of 4 stars. I would like to give it a perfect 4 but there are some typos, like forgotten commas, periods and quotation marks. The transitions are imperfect as well, for example, when a character is on the phone and when she's not, it's not explicitly said. I find it hard to read from one event to the other. There are also explicit sex scenes that i kept on skipping, maybe more than a fourth of the book. Some Spanish conversations are not translated into English so i had to know the meaning by context.
With all of that being said, i still recommend this book to the readers out there. It's wonderful, interesting, gripping especially at the last parts, and will give you an insight about the things that happened and is still happening in Spain. You can search "Operation Malaya" on the internet to know more of the events happened in the book. Kudos!
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Something happened in Spain
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