3 out of 4 stars
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My Trip to Adele is an interesting book that is written from the point of view of three separate characters. It is co-written by a brother-sister duo which sounds like it could get complicated, but actually works well. The first character you are introduced to is Elias, a man originally from Marrakesh, who now lives in Italy. Seeing a Moroccan fortune teller in the street, he is surprised when she grabs him and reads the name of his long-lost love’s mother in his palm. She tells him that the mother put a black magic spell on him to get him to break up with her daughter, and that he must find the spell and get rid of it before he can move on with his life. Elias listens to Adele to calm his heart and give him strength to do what needs to be done.
The second character is Nadia, a single mother living with her 10 year old son in Amman, Jordon. Fighting for freedom from her ex-husband and his manipulative ways she has sacrificed a lot to give her son the life she wants for him. What she wants now, more than anything, is to take her son to an Adele concert (his favorite musician), but she encounters multiple obstacles.
The final character is Yaser, a middle-eastern surgeon living in Las Vegas, so bored with his life and his wife that he is struggling to get through each day. Despite marriage counseling and his love for his 2 children, Yasar feels he’s at a breaking point with his marriage. On the verge of infidelity, he purchases tickets to an Adele concert in Italy to help rekindle the love between himself and his wife. Two out of the three sets of characters in this book never make it to the Adele concert.
The stories of these three characters is very compelling, and though it was a quick read it kept me interested the entire way through. Character development is good and the conflicts build quickly, which I liked. I found myself rooting for the main characters to calm their troubled minds and hopefully make it to the Adele concert where it seemed everything would be magically fixed. What I really liked about the book was that it didn’t have a textbook happy ending. There are twists and surprises and while I thought I knew how it was going to end, I was a bit shocked by some of the finales. I liked the three different stories, though I wished they had ended up intersecting their lives at some point since that was what I expected.
I also liked learning more about middle eastern culture, but occasionally some of the references were lost on me, like when they started talking about paid vs deferred dowry during Yaser’s marriage contract. I was unsure for quite some time whether his wife, Mariam, was also middle eastern, and had to go back to read a couple of paragraphs multiple times. I found the topic of dowry’s quite interesting, but the overall effect was that it was mentioned and then glossed over, creating confusion for someone who doesn’t know much on that subject.
While this book is fairly well edited overall, there were several typos and a few storyline errors that stood out to me, which is why I’m giving it a 3 out of 4 stars. If you like stories that are told from different viewpoints and that hinge on life drama, then I think you will like this book. It wraps up all it’s loose ends and keeps the reader interested for the duration of the book. If you’re looking for happy endings or romance, this is probably not the book for you.
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Trip to Adele
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