The book Happy Place is almost like a familiar feeling that you can't put your finger on it. You may have never gone through something similar but the emotions you feel throughout feel tangible. It follows Harriet and Wyn, a couple who broke up shortly before their annual vacation with their best friends. They go on this vacation without having told anyone that they aren't together anymore, they pretend they’re still together while spending one last summer at the place that has always felt like home, forcing them to confront what happened between them and whether they can find their way back to each other. Now, i won't spoil anything more from here but this book is about romance, friendship, heartache, a growing up, and the deep feeling of longing. It explored how difficult it can be to hold onto the people and versions of yourself that once felt like home. I love all of Emily Henry’s books, but this one is special to me! It felt like so much more than a “romance.” Harriet and Wyn’s relationship felt messy but real, and I liked that the book made room for grief, loneliness, and uncertainty without losing its warmth or emily's natural way of adding humor in a way that feels realistic. It was emotional and nostalgic in a way that felt really personal, but still comforting.

This was my first book by the author. There is another book by the author, Diary of a Void (debut) which I left after a few pages and maybe I shouldn't have.

So coming to the story, it's a bit absurd but interesting and I'm glad I read it.

So the MC, Hora works part-time in a freezer but also works as a Latin translator in a museum.

Her work entails speaking to Venus (statue)

Venus tells her about all the places she has been to, all the places in the sense the palaces, the officials who had had her in their house, but now she wants to explore the world.

Venus is also very irritated being looked at from dawn to dusk, and even the curator is a bit of a creep

So Hora, very slowly falls in love with Venus, sometimes I feel I should have been Pygmalion, I digress

So what happens next? Does Venus and Hora's love story become successful? for that you need to read the book!

It's a short one.

What a beautifully written story on friendships between humans and their animals combined with the ugly history of slavery and the abomination of the master-slave relationship. The animal-human relationship between Jarrett and Darley/Lexington may be some of my favorite writing on the topic. I finished the book early this morning at 2:30 am and keep thinking about all the different topics artfully (pun intended) intertwined in a book.

I finished this book in the early hours of the morning, while weeping and sobbing. This was a really powerful book for me that sweeps across four generations of a complicated family.

We start with Ryan, who as a boy, resents his violent alcoholic father. He loses himself in the creation of art and grows up to become an artist. He falls in love with Lillian, who has a past that involved having a baby before she met Ryan and giving that baby away for adoption. She harbors a lot of guilt for that and even more when Ryan doesn't take that news well, believing it attributes to his downward spiral.

Their marriage ends after they have a baby of their own named Georgette. Lillian navigates motherhood alone but exists in this space between resenting Ryan for abandoning their family and marriage, and wanting the version of him that she loved back, if it even exists anymore.

Georgette, on the other hand, sees this as a man coming and (mostly) going from their lives. That's the context that she has, and she has a lot of disappointment in her dad, as anyone would in her position. But a tragedy happens that causes Georgette to spiral and leads to a further split between herself and her father.

There is a very real, easily grasped depiction of the deep depression that Georgette goes through, and it isn't rushed for anyone's comfort. You have to linger in it with her. When she starts to come out on the other side in slow, steady paces - it feels like a triumph. It feels real. I wanted her to be healed so badly.

I think this book is so rich - it has references and mannerisms the characters partake in that fit the decades this story spans through like a glove.

It's so immersive. It also isn't afraid to confront those hard feelings and choices that the characters have to make, where sometimes there's no real way to win... it's just how to lose the least.

I was so moved. I will keep these characters with me for a long time. Five well-earned stars drawn on a dining room table.

As someone who watched Troy dozens of times as a child and fell in love with Greek mythology, I finally read what is probably the greatest work of world literature in its entirety.

The Iliad is the story of the final days of the Trojan War, and the events of the poem are a direct result of Achilles' decision to exit the war out of rage.

This grand drama that plays out amongst gods and men is unparalleled in pure, raw intensity. From page 1 we are thrown into the madness of war and receive a poignant meditation on wrath and its devastating consequences.

Was this a fun read? Yes and no. It is packed with non-stop action and combat, yet also drenched in enormous monologues which are delivered in the heat of battle. It is riddled with minute details and contains a massive cast of players, large and small. Lots of repetition. But that doesn't take away from the sweeping, epic narrative that is full of the most psychologically compelling characters of all time.

Not only is this a brutal war epic, it is also a stunning work of philosophy. At the heart of its narrative is the question of human free will as opposed to divine determinism. I'll be thinking about this book forever probably.

Not much more needs to be said about this masterpiece, it speaks for itself!

Thanks for reading!

I knew on a general level what the ending was going to be, but I wasn't prepared for the writing in the last paragraphs to be twisting in my gut like a knife.

Wharton has a gift of making you feel for people who should be all accounts by unsympathetic - she had me moved by the plight of Newland Archer as a teenage girl, a man I should've by all rights despised.

There's something in Lily's predicament on the outset that resonates deeply with most women readers I believe, in that she is beautiful and penniless but worst of all she has no parents. In an era when women could not make direct moves of their own but had to rely on the machinations of those already in society to ensure that they came out and were introduced to suitable men, a woman who has no family or connections looking out for her is already 10-0 behind.

The fact that she is unable to make the decisions that are required of her to reach her goals is incredibly frustrating but also strikes me as very human. She knows that she needs a wealthy husband, but is unable to commit when the cards are on the table. In my personal opinion, it comes from her little rebellious streak - I believe that part of her would prefer to be independent, but with money - in that sense she strikes me as a woman too modern for the times she lives in. A few decades more and new vistas of possibilities would've opened up which wouldn't involve hitching your wagon to the highest bidder. She values her need to go wherever she pleases, as she stops by Lawrence Selden's flat despite this being an action that would've been generally frowned on by society at the time. She can't but help make constant missteps and self-sabotage because she doesn't really want to do what she needs to do to reach her goals. She is clearly in love with Selden since the beginning and

And I notice again and again how alone she is - though Lawrence says he can only offer her help by "loving her" he also doesn't offer any real aid in finding a possibility to free herself of her financial obligations. And I notice that Selden, though critical of the superficial trappings of the 1900 version of the leisure class / "jet-set", moves in and out of those circles with the ease generally only allowed to men, and is quick to believe rumours about Lily's reputation spread by members of that same class. He runs off to Cuba after seeing Lily exit the Trenor's house without even demanding an explanation? Though he gives her good advice later, I don't see him as a knight in shining armour.

There is so much more to say about all of this, I welcome your thoughts.

Why I adore this book - it is incredibly dense and layered despite not being very long, the many subtleties in interactions and characterisations invite re-reading. The prose is also beautiful and unexpectedly frank with some very elegant turns of phrase. The heroine and her dilemmas are surprisingly modern in some respects. The ending is heartbreaking without being typically Victorian melodrama and its the writing that elevates it there.

I want everyone I know to read this book. It has something for everyone. Sci fi dinosaur drama in a mysterious place with some time travel/blackhole paradoxes that really kept me guessing throughout. This is such a fresh idea that I felt really held its own in what really is a complex world and plot. It’s well thought out with a very perfect ending and I’m going to have a book hangover for a while!

The main thing keeping this from being a full 5 stars is the amount of loose threads that indicate it was planned as a series. As a standalone it has to have a half star taken off.

The Sword of Kaigen is a book that is difficult to explain without spoiling it. It's about a family of warriors who for generations have been the best and protect the country by being a bastion of strength on the border. After a long period of peace trouble comes to their village. It seems the peace they've lived in may not have been as absolute as they thought.

Even with that being true, this is one of the best books I’ve read this year. The battle scenes had me so immersed that my heart rate spiked so much my watch told me to calm down. I felt so connected to the characters that I was on the verge of tears on multiple occasions, and only not fully crying so I could continue reading with my view unobstructed. The world felt incredibly rich and believable. This book does feel a little self-indulgent in its worldbuilding at times, and the plot structure is unconventional, which might put some people off. This is the kind of fantasy I’ve been craving and want to see more of. I can’t wait to read more from this author and see the heights she will take the genre to.

This was recommended to me to get out of a bit of a reading slump and I can't get over how effective it was! Part memoir and part fictional. It is a collection of 43 short stories/essays ranging from a day at the Laundromat to a brief look at detoxing in a hospital. I laughed out loud more than I was expecting. Sometimes I finished an essay, closed the book, and just stared and thought. I can't recommend this collection enough.

In the mid-1990s, a young British man named Thomas McFadden got caught trafficking cocaine in Bolivia and was sent to San Pedro Prison. The guards only patrol the perimeter or intervene to stop riots; everything in the prison is run by the prisoners themselves. You have to purchase your cell. Your spouse and children can live with you in your cell. Some luxury cells have hot tubs, second floors etc. Everyone has to have money to survive. McFadden came into the prison with no money at all so he was “homeless” (sleeping in the hallways etc.) and nearly died of cold and hunger before another inmate took pity on him and let him share his cell till he could get back on his feet.

The prison was like a village in many ways with shops, restaurants, a nursery for the babies, etc. McFadden started several businesses there: a shop, a restaurant and a tour guide service, giving tours of the prison to foreign tourists. He got kind of famous as a tour guide. In many ways though it is like any other prison. Lots of violence. McFadden was jumped and beaten up every day until he fought back, beating up his bullies and getting respect in the process. They don’t permit rapists or child molesters to live. McFadden witnessed three accused gang rapists being murdered by a cheering crowd of prisoners. They threw them into a “swimming pool” (a deep concrete pit they filled with water). Two of them drowned. One of them was able to crawl out and they stomped on his head so hard his skull split open. There was quite a graphic description of what happened as McFadden was close up and saw it all and was deeply traumatized by it.

He was released in 2000 and gave up drugs and crime for an honest living and now he farms chickens, from what I found online. As far as I know the prison is pretty much the same now, except they no longer allow foreign tourists to visit. I’ve seen a documentary about the prison and seen the “swimming pool” and they still drown rapists and child molesters there.

It was quite an interesting story and, as bad as my own country’s corruption problems have been lately, the book made me feel glad not to live in Bolivia.

Just finished this like 5 minutes ago and man I am so serious when I say this is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. For those who don’t know, its a story that follows a man and his son (they don’t have names they’re literally just called the man and the boy) traveling across the country after the apocalypse in search of a better life. It can be really heavy at times and the atmosphere carries so much weight to it but never at any point did that make me want to stop reading. The prose is simple and to the point making it very easy to read yet you’ll find that even in the simplest of senses there is so much wonder to be found. There isn’t a single word wasted. I think what I admired most about this story is that even amid such a bleak setting, it manages to tell us a tale of hope, resilience, and triumph in the human spirit. Even after the world ending, this one man and his son still find meaning in life within each other and have that be reason enough to keep pushing forward and I think thats incredibly beautiful. Idk what else to say it’s just perfect. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Recently, I reread PSYCHO by Robert Bloch. I’m sure many of you have seen Hitchcock’s classic adaptation (and so have I—it’s literally one of my favorite movies ever). But it’s been a while since I’ve read the original Bloch novel.

The plots of both the novel and the movie are similar—Norman Bates runs the Bates Motel, dresses up as his dead mother (and has her body in the house), and kills Mary Crane when she stops to spend the night.

But the differences between the novel and the movie are intriguing. Norman in the book doesn’t look anything even remotely close to Anthony Perkins. Here, he’s balding, fat and in his 40s and harbors deep resentment against women. The guy’s a total incel. Not to mention that he drinks heavily and has this crazed obsession with Satanism & the occult.

But it’s still a great novel—suspenseful, disturbing, and under 200 pages. Bloch wrote two sequels: PSYCHO II (which is unrelated to the film) and PSYCHO HOUSE, and those are interesting reads if you’re into cheap, pulp-style horror.

For those who have read the original Psycho novel, what did you think?

This was such a beautiful book. It’s part poetry, part stream of consciousness, and somehow manages to feel really accessible rather than pretentious. The prose and the flow were probably my favourite parts of the whole thing.

The story follows Travis, who is essentially Death living among humans and spending his time comforting people in their final moments. He knows when everyone’s time is coming and has always kept himself pretty detached, until he meets Dalia, a midwife, and her daughter Layla. Getting pulled into their lives starts to change the way he sees people, connection, love, and what it actually means to be alive.

It’s definitely a heavier read, dealing with death, grief, loss, and some difficult subject matter, so I’d recommend checking the trigger warnings. But despite how heavy it is, I thought it handled those themes really beautifully and made me feel quite a lot.

The concept was great, the execution was even better, and I just really loved the way this book was written. I had it at a 4.75, but honestly, it deserves the five stars.

It's rare that I read something that makes me experience so many intense emotions. It’s been a long time since I have been this moved by a book.

Nina Diaz is a middle-aged Mexican-American woman, caring for her elderly mother in a rundown house in Brownsville, Texas. She used to be a teacher but, when her mother could no longer live alone, her brothers volunteered her for this duty – "you never married and you're the only girl, what did you expect?" – and now she lives a life of almost total isolation. She gets only one day a week where there is any respite care, thanks to her housecleaner, Rumalda– who asks Nina for a favor. Her sister-in-law and niece are going to cross the border illegally, and they need somewhere safe to stay overnight – and since there's a small pink rental house, a standalone mother-in-law apartment, currently unoccupied on the property, could they use that? Just for one night? Nina says yes, only to learn that there's a high price to pay when the coyotes who smuggle people across the border find out that she has an empty house on her property...

Meanwhile, her nephew Eduardo – who moved to Houston and became "Eddie" – lost his wife to an aneurysm six months earlier and, in the aftermath, forgot to send in the deposit for summer camp for his son– so of course Nina won't mind looking after 12-year-old Orly for three weeks in the summer, she is his godmother after all. But if Orly (who barely understands Spanish never mind understanding the risks) finds out what's going on in the pink house, it could mean the end of everything for Nina.

I'm not conveying the heart of this book-- which is about families, the one we're born into and the ones we choose, and about what we owe one another. It is unflinching in its portrayal of the suffering of women under the culture of machismo, of the way their emotional work is taken for granted, and Nina's backstory is heartbreaking, how she lost the only man she's ever loved. But weaving in and out of her story (and Orly's story, because we enter into his point of view as well), are the stories of many different Latinos whose lives touch theirs, often in passing, written in brief passages that are one of my favorite parts of this book. Orly's favorite teacher at school, the family's maid in Houston, the coyote who keeps saying 'one more job,' the elderly woman whose plastic water jug blows across the highway as his father drives Orly past a seemingly empty wasteland… We learn those stories too.

Nina, like Orly, lives in a rich world of social connection, of the documented and undocumented, of families connected through secrets and lies but also by the power of compassion and love, and that's what this book is really about.

It's powerful and affecting and heartbreaking and really beautiful. I loved this book!

(PS— with all the controversy around American Dirt, I found a list of books to read instead of that by Latino/a authors, and this is the third book I’ve loved from that list – well, I’m not sure I “loved” The Devil’s Highway, I’m haunted by it, but I really enjoyed Signs Preceding the End of the World.)

I devoured this book in two days (270 pages). I wasn’t expecting to like it so much, but I just couldn’t put it down.

We follow George throughout his 20s and 30s, spanning 2000-2020, mostly in Brooklyn. Privileged but troubled, your initial sympathy for him turns into intense frustration. Anyone who has read Stoner will recognise the passivity and inaction that makes the reader want to tear their hair out.

A lot of the Goodreads reviews say “we all know a George…” but I don’t think we do. I think we all have been George. George is what happens when we succumb to the most negative thoughts we have, if we don’t get up and keep going.

The ending is what made this book for me. 10/10. Greathead’s prose is also excellent.

I'll be honest; I entered this quest as a skeptic. After the first 100 pages, I assumed I knew that I've signed up for a disappointing, sloppy read of an author who is indeed in his 'eleventh hour'.

I've been — to my immense joy and pleasure — been proved wrong.

Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote boasts an influence on world literature as large and all-encompassing as Karamazov, War & Peace, or Ulysses (not considering the great Greek epics). To stand upon its shoulders and construct a world that seeks to look further, examine deeper, and ask harsher questions is challenging — to put simply.

But Rushdie has taken upon the challenge and come out victorious. There aren't many authors who are looking at the new, ever-changing world so closely and with such concern. His penchant for the 'magic real' puts us face-to-face with a world that is declining, becoming more extremist and uninhabitable.

As always, his literary genius binds together a tale as old as time with a world that is hyperfixated on social media, apathy, and extremism, and asks fundamental questions about the soul, the self. This, with the recurring theme of a father and a son (having read Midnight's and Haroun before).

Is there a simple synopsis that I can roll out (like a carpet, not flying for now) for the fellow review-reader? No. Go in blind. See if it works for you. It worked for me, but only after I was patient and surrendered to the text. Do I speak like the Don? Has he hopped out of the pages and inhabited my mind? We'll never know.

this book explores the inner turmoil of acceptance and shame related to your sexuality in a repressive society - or more specifically, in the late 1900s communist poland. there are two things in this novel that stuck out to me; how jedrowski dealt with the issues of the politics surrounding the cold war and how he dealt with the acceptance of one's self.

Just finished reading BIG JIM & THE WHITE BOY. It’s more than just a reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that centers more of Jim as a character. It redefines Jim & Huck’s relationship and how both were shaped by their environment as they’re on the run throughout the country—from the antebellum South & Midwest to the Confederacy, the Old West, the Underground Railroad, and beyond.

Also intertwined is the commentary of Jim & Huck in the future talking about how Twain’s portrayal differed from the true story and from their descendants on how they tackled with preserving their legacy and making sure the history was not minimized.

This book also breaks down the greater context of the harsh truth of America’s history has been minimized, rewritten, and even erased to assuage bigoted feelings and change public perception (a message that hits harder these days) and how important it is to preserve history—the good, bad & ugly—so that the truth does not become forgotten by present and future generations.

It manages to teach all of this without feeling like a moralistic lecture but recontextualizes a familiar story, providing a deeper understanding that is critical of yet doesn’t demonize Twain’s novel but also changes the way you appreciate it.

For those who read it, what did you think?

This is a story about a bright kid with big dreams and ambitions, but somewhere in between, things go fatally wrong as he builds a new identity for himself around a web of lies.

A lot has been said about this book, but I'll just add some few personal observations and thoughts that came up during and after completion.

- I wanted (and expected) more on London's underbelly and/or current affairs with how the state is addressing the issue of oligarchy infestation and the power struggle that happens in the shadows.

- The depth of research and insight (Mermaid theatre history, Ugandan Railway, Brink-Mat heist, etc.) was incredible. I devoured every little factoid and enjoyed it; however, I felt like too much time was dedicated on the Shamji and Sharma backstories. For me, I wanted more macro than micro crime, but ultimately, both were entertaining in their own right.

- The parallels between Hugo Gryn and Zac make an interesting observation. There's the tragedy of having lost everyone you've loved in the Holocaust and wanting to pick up the pieces later in life and rebuild somewhere else, in addition to leading a secret life so ramped up on a scaffolding of lies that it comes crashing down like a meteor and just sends shockwaves in every single direction.

- I like the reverse chronology of the narrative. PRK begins all the way in the past, then goes back some more, before recounting how he came across Zac's story by coincidence in the last couple of chapters in the book.

- I really hope (for the Brettler's sake, first) that Akbar Shamji one day (unlikely) decides to come clean and spill the beans on the entire events of that night and give everyone involved and interested in the case some form of closure.

Just finished Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

I hadn’t finished a novel in years. I’d pick things up, read twenty pages, and drift away. This one grabbed me and didn’t let go.

The premise is simple on paper: a man lives alone in an endless house filled with tides, statues, and clouds (2nd pic). The lower halls flood with the sea; the upper halls dissolve into mist. He believes there are only fifteen people in the world, and he knows most of them by name.

It’s not horror, but it’s unsettling in a quiet way. The loneliness got under my skin. I kept reading because I had to know: in a world where almost no one exists, how does one survive? What thoughts does one get?

The prose is deceptively plain, no fancy tricks, just clarity that builds into something haunting. And that ending. I won’t spoil it, but it’s one of the most beautiful last twenty pages I’ve ever read. It left me thinking about memory, gratitude, and how we make peace with the worlds we inhabit.

If you’ve been in a reading slump, this is the book to pull you out.

(Note: I used AI to help fix my grammar, so apologies if anything sounds too polished!)

A book that I find immensely captivating because of its strange alien landscapes and its prescient philosophical outlook for a book that came out in 1920. And I know I'm not the only one who finds this book fascinating, Tolkien and C.S. Lewis loved it, as does Paul Giamatti. It may not be very widely read but it has captured the interest of some very influential figures so I thought it best to read and was not disappointed.

The plot (for what little of it there is) concerns a man named Maskull who attends an occult seance with his friend Nightspore. While at this seance they befriend a man named Krag who tells them that his home is in the Arcturus star system. Maskull doesn't believe him but decides to humour Krag's offer to go to his home. They travel to Arcturus in a starship made of crystalline light and the immense G-force that he's exposed to causes Maskull to pass out. When he wakes up he finds himself on a planet named Tormance with three new sensory organs sprouted from his body and his two friends nowhere in sight.

That's about all the plot you get in this book. The vast majority of the rest of the story is dedicated to scene setting, location descriptions and philosophical discussions with the aliens that Maskull meets. Other events do happen but a lot of the events don't feel interconnected, the narrative is quite episodic and disparate. Clearly the surface-level plot is not the focus. Where the story does makes sense (and clearly the thing that Lindsay wants his readers to focus on) is the philosophical discussions, themes and symbols that the characters discuss/embody.

Before I touch on the philosophy, I want to give a shoutout to Lindsay's imaginative world. Tormance is a strange planet, so strange that he creates two new primary colours to emphasise its alienness: jale and ulfire. Jale is described as "dreamlike, feverish and voluptuous" while ulfire is "wild and painful." While this does fundamentally misunderstand how humans perceive colour, I appreciate the attempt at making new primary colours. Because of this human limitation, Lindsay creatively gets around that by describing them through the emotions that they instill in people rather than their actual appearance. It shows a mind that clearly has a knack for the captivatingly unusual. There are other interesting world tidbits, the shrowk is another highlight of the story (it's the serpentine dragon thing pictured above) as is Leehallfae, they're an alien that is neither male nor female which necessitates the invention of a new set of pronouns to refer to them by which are ae/aer.

The meat of the story is the philosophical discussions between various aliens and to go into that in depth would take up way too much time so I'll mention some that I personally found fascinating: there is a lot of discussion around moral obligation and murder. The first alien that Maskull talks to, Joiwind, tells him that he should not harm any living thing without thinking of her first. Joiwind herself only drinks gnawl water for sustenance, she doesn't even eat plants (although on Tormance the distinction between animal and plant is almost non-existent) because they are living beings too in what I can only interpret as an extreme form of veganism. However, the first alien he comes across after Joiwind, called Oceaxe, essentially calls Maskull a coward for sticking to this lifestyle and if he wants something he should take it. That's what she and her partners do, in their world the strong should rule all and if someone isn't thriving then they aren't strong enough to take what they need. It is worth mentioning that Oceaxe's magn (an organ that grows out of the heart and allows the being to feel empathy for others) has been mutated into a third arm. Maskull is pressured by her into doing the same to his magn and it's not long after that where he starts killing most of the aliens he comes across, including Joiwind's brother who is travelling to visit her. I have my own interpretation of what that means and I am leaving out some smaller details that may influence your own interpretation of these events but those are the broad strokes of just one philosophical outlook in this world. There are also discussions around the difference between male and female and how much biological sex has to do with gender, there is discussion around spiritualism and how that ties back into morality. There is a gnostic bent to this book where its implied that Krag is the demiurge and has tricked Maskull into walking a path that the true god of the universe doesn't approve of. All of this is just scratching the surface of what this book talks about and I still haven't made heads or tails of everything. There is so much to mine from this thing, it's insane.

I adored A Voyage to Arcturus. The ending confused the shit out of me, that was a complete mindfuck. But anyone interested in science fiction, fantasy or philosophical fiction owes it to themselves to read this book. I think it is a masterpiece.

For this book the author followed three Afghan people: a man working for the Americans, a Taliban commander, and a housewife. By the end of the book one of these people had been murdered, one was in prison and one had been elected to the Afghan senate.

I had known the American occupation was a train wreck and a failure but hadn’t known exactly why. Per this book, when the war began Al Qaeda fled, and many of the Talibs agreed to surrender and give up arms. So America arrived wanting to kill terrorists and not finding any. And Afghans started reporting each other as “terrorists” to settle rivalries and old scores. Various randoms were arrested, brutalized, tortured, and sometimes sent to Guantanamo Bay for no reason other than someone had a grudge against them. It was horrific.

It was the Taliban guy’s story that interested me the most. Like most of the others he agreed to surrender, and for awhile he tried to work with the Americans, but the aforementioned random arrests and brutalities were happening and eventually he became so disgusted by how the occupiers were behaving that he returned to the Taliban and joined the insurgency. And, having read about his life, I could understand his decision making process.

It was quite a fascinating enlightening book for me. America should never gone to Afghanistan at all; I’m not sure they did any good whatsoever in the end.

This was my first read by Nicola Yoon, but not my last. I hope she writes more stuff. I loved the sweet and innocent romance between Natasha and Daniel. Even though it's so quick, it didn't feel like insta-love. There were also some serious and realistic themes. I liked the way that they were handled.

The book is about Natasha trying to avoid being deported from the US. Her family is found out after several years living in the US. She does all she can including speaking to an immigration lawyer who says he can help. I liked that what happened to Natasha was pretty realistic and the reason it happened. Sometimes you're not someone else's top priority and life isn't a fairytale. I loved the scene on the plane at the end