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Book: “All Our Wars” by Stephanie Vasquez
Publishing Info: SparkPress, October 2024
Where Did I Get This Book: I received an ARC from the publisher.
Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound
Book Description: For fans of Katie Gutierrez’s More Than You’ll Ever Know and Netflix’s Narcos comes a high-stakes thriller about the daughter of a high-ranking Mexican cartel leader dragged back to the life she fought hard to escape.
Twelve years have passed since Sofia De Luna’s mother was murdered. Sofia now leads a quiet life, far from the cartel violence she was raised amidst. But when her narco father’s retirement catapults her to head of the family, that peaceful existence is upended.
Unhappy with this changeover of power, Sofia’s brothers and cousins are wary of her desire to legitimize the family and her insistent questions about her mother’s mysterious death. Meanwhile, in Mexico’s uncertain political climate, Andres Herrera, the ex-sicario accused of Sofia’s mother’s murder, sees the opportunity for his exit from the drug business. He just needs Sofia, his first love, to uphold the truce between the cartels before the war brewing at the border trickles down to Mexico City, marring the upcoming election.
After a chance meeting with a disenfranchised DEA agent reveals the true depths the Torres will go to keep their power, Sofia decides she must stop the war her cousins have put in motion. But if she sacrifices her family for the dream of peace, will she meet the same fate as her mother?
Review: Thank you to SparkPress for sending me an ARC of this novel!
My organized crime fiction experience is pretty limited to mafia movies like “The Godfather” and lots of the Scorsese catalog (“Goodfellas” is a favorite movie of mine, Terror Tuesday people and I have made it a Christmas tradition to watch it and eat lasagna). I’m not really someone who reads a lot of organized crime stuff, and I can’t think of any off the top of my head. But I’m always game to try new sub genres, so when “All Our Wars” by Stephanie Vasquez ended up in the inbox I felt that it was a sign that it was time to try out an organized crime thriller.
The intrigue, politicking, and tension regarding a power vacuum in a cartel family in this book made for a suspenseful read. Sofia is the daughter of a powerful cartel boss in Mexico, who left her family behind after her mother Maria was murdered and her close friend/lover Andres, now an ex-sicario, was accused of the murder but never taken to task for it. When she comes to visit at her father’s behest, she is told that she is next in line to run the business, just in time for her father to be killed under murky circumstances. All of this alone is interesting from the jump because I liked seeing the way that Sofia has to balance her own desires to stay out of it along with the familial pressure to stay, especially since it could cause a hostile takeover from her cousins should she make the wrong move, especially since the brewing power struggle between cartels could have a ripple effect all across Mexico. I really liked Sofia as a main character, and seeing her try to do the right thing while uncovering lots of disturbing truths regarding her family had me invested, especially as she starts to work alongside a DEA agent to try and get more answers and potentially put herself in even more danger. The ins and outs of the crime family and the violent realities of the business are engaging and interesting.
But what I enjoyed most about this book was the way that Vasquez presents a number of complicated and passionate familial and romantic relationships, and seeing how these relationships fit into the political and business interests of the cartel and the groups that benefit from them. Some of the more obvious ones are the relationships between Sofia and her former love Andres, or the romance between her brother Diego and his lover Yolotli, both of which I found to have an aching longing that gave them some complexity. But the one that I really liked was getting insight into the backstory of Sofia’s mother Maria and her relationship with Andres’s father Martin, and their doomed romance that was stopped before it could really start thanks to the fact Maria’s father betrothed her to Alberto, the heir apparent to a powerful cartel, who ends up being Sofia’s father. We see the way that Maria has her own desires but feels like she needs to push them away, and how her involvement in Alberto’s business starts to make her fear for herself and her children, and how she is still drawn to Martin in the years after their romance never quite happened. We get a lot of information about Maria, and we see how she has affected Sofia and her own values. I think Maria was my favorite character, and seeing her path juxtaposed with Sofia’s was a great choice.
“All Our Wars” was outside of my sub genre box, but I’m happy I took a chance on it. Maybe I should check out more of this sub genre.
Rating 7: A cartel thriller mixed with some tense family drama, “All Our Wars” was outside my usual reading sub genres but was a satisfying detour.
Reader’s Advisory:
“All Our Wars” isn’t included on any Goodreads lists as of now, but it would fit in on “Drug Cartel”.
The Library Ladies 