3 out of 4 stars
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My Trip to Adele by R.I. Alyaseer and A.I. Alyaseer follows the lives of three protagonists. Elias currently lives in Rome. He met Malika in Marrakesh and left her there 8 years ago. He finds that he cannot stop thinking about her. Yaser is married to Mariam. They live in Las Vegas. Their marriage is unhappy and as a last resort, they go to see a marriage counselor. Nadia lives in Amman and is a single mom with an 8-year-old son.
The 3 protagonists live in different parts of the world and do not know each other. What brings them together in this novel is that they all want to attend the Adele concert in Verona, Italy. Their reasons for wanting to attend are all different.
Each chapter of the book tells us more about the three protagonists. The interesting thing about this particular book is that each chapter is based on an Adele song, with the last lines of each chapter being the lyrics of that particular song. I thought this was a different and unique concept which I enjoyed.
Fans of Adele would definitely enjoy this book and also anyone who likes a quick read. One downfall of this book, for me, was the fact that it is only 227 pages long. I felt that the character development was hindered due to this. I would like to have got to know the protagonists and the people around them better. We never get to know much about Mariam, who is Yaser’s wife. In the opening chapter Elias is with Veronica, but we never learn who she is and the part she plays in Elias’s life. It is definitely a book which ends too soon. We learn through Elias’s story that Morocco has a big sex trade, especially where young girls are concerned and this may deter certain people from reading this book.
I enjoyed this book but would have liked there to be more to it in regards to length and character development. I liked that fact that the story was built around 3 main characters instead of one as that gave the book more variety, but more development was needed. I found very minimal errors, which did not detract from the flow of the story.
I rate this book 3 out of 4 stars. Although I did enjoy the book, I thought that there should have been more to it. Instead of getting meat and two veg, I only got one veg. I would like to have learned more about the individual characters. Elias confused me. He said that he loved Malika and yet he left her. I also am a little unsure about a grown man falling in love with a 13-year-old girl. These facts caused me to not give a perfect score. Kudos to the authors who translated the book into English and self-published.
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My Trip To Adele
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