Publishers Weekly
Inés narrates with a clear eye and a sensitivity to native peoples that rarely lapses into anachronistic political correctness. Basing the tale on documented events of her heroine’s life, Allende crafts a swift, thrilling epic, packed with fierce battles and passionate romance.

Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)
Pamela Miller
“Inés is wholly a woman of her day, and Allende does not turn away from the historical record, which has her decapitating indigenous prisoners and hurling their heads over a fortress wall to terrorize their peers as well as saving lives as a gentle-handed healer.”

“Despite its graphic violence, “Ines,” like all of Allende’s novels, drips with color and sensuality. The author spent four years researching the era, incorporating knowledge not just about the history of Chile during the subjugation of its native people by the courageous and cruel Spanish, but such vital details as the kinds of food emigrants ate on the long ocean voyage and their manner of dress.The research pays off in finely detailed scenes.”

Entertainment Weekly
Jennifer Reese
Allende peppers Inés’ bio with characteristically fragrant details emotional fire-storms, lush foliage, aphrodisiac potions, and many “blazing whirlwinds” of lovemaking that turn a truly extraordinary life story into a forgettable, easy-reading romp.

Booklist
Brad Hooper
Fiction about the conquistador experience in the New World can’t possibly get better than Allende’s treatment of the subject in her latest novel, which is based on the life of a real historical character.

Library Journal Review
Kellie Gillespie
This fictionalized account of one of Chile’s national heroines is meticulously researched and offers a detailed account of a little-known time period in history, as an older Inés recounts her life story.

Star Tribune, Minneapolis, MN
John Freeman
In the pantheon of great female leaders from history, Dona Inés Suarez of Chile might have been the most adventuresome of all. Born in Plasencia, Spain, in 1507, she came to the Americas at the age of 30 looking for her husband, who had been lured to the New World in search of gold. Inés never found him, but stumbled into the arms of Pedro de Valdivia, the Spanish conqueror of Chile. It’s hard to fathom how rough and ready those years must have been for Inés - surrounded by a hostile culture and climate, the creeper vine of mutiny (not to mention lust) growing within Valdivia’s men, Isabel Allende brings us part of the way there in her action-packed new novel “Inés of My Soul”.