The Last Girl by Nadia Murad
306 pages

What’s it about?
Nadia Murad was born in raised in Kocha, a small village in Northern Iraq.  She is a member of the Yazidi community and has always lived a quiet life in her close community.  Nadia is just twenty-one years old when ISIS militants take over her village. They quickly execute all the men that refuse to convert to Islam, and all the women too old to become sex slaves.  Nadia ,along with thousands of other Yazidi women, is taken to Mosul and forced into the slave trade.   This is her story.
 
What did it make me think about?
 Reading this I kept thinking about all the Holocaust books I have read.  I always thought,, "We need to remember so it does not ever happen again".  But it does happen- Rwanda, Iraq, and Syria are just recent examples.  It just boggles the mind that such evil exists- and so little is done to stop it.

Should I read it?
 Nadia Murad just won the Noble Peace prize.  She is remarkable young woman who has turned her personal tragedy into her life's work.  As she said, "I know now that I was born in the heart of the crimes committed against me."  I found this book to be a page-turner that was disturbing and unsettling.  How do these events keep happening?  How does religion so often play a key role?  We see the refugee crisis on the evening news, but this book makes the crisis personal.

Quote-
"I still think that being forced to leave your home out of fear is one of the worst injustices a human being can face.  Everything you love is stolen, and you risk your life to live in a place that means nothing to you and where, because you come from a country now known for war and terrorism, you are not really wanted.  So you spend the rest of years longing for what you left behind while praying not to be deported."

If you like this try-
Madame President by Helene Cooper
​Forty Autumns by Nina Willner
​My Brother Moochie by Issac J. Bailey
Everything Happens for a Reason and other Lies I have Loved by Kate Bower

9 stars

Our Little Racket by Angelica Baker
495 pages

What’s it about?
 This book takes place in Greenwich, Connecticut at the height of the financial collapse of 2008.  Bob D'Amico runs a powerful investment bank until things begin to crumble all around him.  Has he just taken too many risks or is he a criminal?  Either way he has ruined the lives of a lot of people.  Seen through the eyes of his daughter Madison and four other women that are close to the household- this novel gives us a slice of how families were affected by the financial crisis.

What did it make me think about?
 I just so hope that this is not what the wealthy women of Greenwich are really like....  The women in this book come across as manipulative, cunning, shallow, and insecure.  “Many of these other women were like Mina, had grown up in places that were nothing like this, but they’d forgotten it so fast.  They’d blinked and then suddenly were women who deserved this, who could talk to Isabel D’Amico and pretend they understood her.  The only thing that remained of their old selves was the survival instinct, the willingness to claw another women out of the way."

Should I read it?
 I had two issues with the book.  First- Angelica Baker is a fine writer but she needed some self restraint and a better editor!  No one wants to read almost 500 pages about these people.  They warrant 300-350 pages at most.  Second- the motivations of the characters were oblique and hard to decipher.  The women were almost cartoonish in the way they were portrayed.  I am sure their is some truth in here but it seems buried under a lot of cliches.  It is an ok beach read...but who are these people?
 
Quote-
"A few Italian words sprinkled here and there and the annual Christmas-Day car ride to Nanna Connie's because Isabel would never say anything in front of her mother-in-law.  It wasn't the potential weight gain that bothered her mother, Madison knew, or that wasn't what bothered her the most.  It was the wanton disregard for discipline, Madison's willingness to let everyone around her see how bottomless her appetites were, how raw her hunger.  If you wanted something, her mother believed, you took steps to acquire it in the privacy of your own home, so that by the time you are out in the world again, you had everything you needed.  You did not let other people see you as grasping, desperate."

If you like this try-
The Swans of New York by Melanie Benjamin
​Bittersweet by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore
Love, Nina by Nina Stibbe
The Unfortunates by Sophie McManus

5 stars

Tangerine by Christine Mangan
308 pages

What’s it about?
Lucy and Alice are inseparable college roommates until a terrible accident tears them apart. Alice leaves college and marries.   She moves to Tangiers with her new husband John.  Unexpectedly Lucy appears in Tangiers and at her door one day. 

What did it make me think about?
This novel is all style and suspense.  This book had me turning the page and not thinking too much at all.

Should I read it?
Something about this book reminded me of  “Rebecca”.  Not the plot but the stylish writing and the sense that at any moment something is going to happen.  If you like a psychological thriller then try this one.  It is not amazing- but it is fun.  I hear George Clooney has bought the rights so you may be seeing it in a theatre near you soon.

Quote-
"Over a year now, and it was still cast in a hazy fog that I could not seem to work my way out of, no matter how long I tripped through the labyrinth.  It's better that way, my aunt had said afterward, when I told her about the vaporous sheen my memories had taken on, how I could no longer remember details of that horrible night, of the days that followed.  Leave it in the past, she had urged as if my memories were objects that could be packed away in boxes secure enough to ensure they would never let loose the secrets within."
​
If you like this try-
​The Loney by Micahel Andrew Hurley
Norwegian by Night by Derek B. Miller
So Say theFallen by Stuart Neville
The Life We Bury by Allen Eskins

7 1/2 stars

A Place For Us by Fatima Farheer Mirza
382 pages

What’s it about?
This book opens at a family wedding in California.  Hadia is getting married in a traditional Indian- Muslim ceremony.  Hadia’s mother, father, younger sister-Huda, and younger brother-Amar are all in attendance.  As the story opens you realize that for an unknown reason Amar is estranged from the family.  The rest of the novel goes back and forth in time and viewpoints to explain Amar’s place in the family.

What did it make me think about? 
This book captures the complexity of family relationships.  It made me think of how we all see shared experiences so very differently.  This story emphasizes how our age, our generation, and our life experiences influence those viewpoints.   What grandparent can't understand this quote-  “ A young child was asleep on her father’s shoulder, her little feet bare, her mother following with her shoes hooked on curled fingers.  They had their whole lives ahead of them: they moved through the world where anything was possible and did not even know to be grateful for it. "

Should I read it?
So this book has gotten a lot of hype because it is the first book from Sarah Jessica Parker’s line for Hogarth.  Such a shame as all the hype should be about this amazing new writer.  I thought this book was a treasure.  I wanted to slow down and just savor the last fifty pages.  One of my favorite books I have read in years!  Don’t miss the one.

Quote-couldn't choose just one!
“She knows her father.  His pride, his values, his adherence to religious rules.  They are more important than love.  More important than loyalty to one’s child.  She always sensed conditions to their parents’ love so she did nothing to threaten it.  Amar senses the same and only thought to test its limits.  See how far he could push them before they left him.”

“We pray together and when it is time for us to ask our hearts desire, my first wish is that he remain steadfast in faith, and then, if he does not, that he never believe that God is a being with a heart like a human’s, capable of being small and vindictive.”

If you liked this try-
And The Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
​Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue
​Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
​Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout

9 1/2 stars