Sunday, May 15, 2011

Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris

My mom recommended this book to me and, although I was skeptical at first, I thoroughly enjoyed it! Here is the summary from the author's website:

When sixteen-year-old Nouf goes missing, her prominent family calls on Nayir Sharqi, a pious desert guide, to lead the search party. Ten days later, just as Nayir is about to give up in frustration, her body is discovered by anonymous desert travelers. When the coroner's office determines that Nouf died not of dehydration but from drowning, and her family seems suspiciously uninterested in getting at the truth, Nayir takes it upon himself to find out what really happened.

The story is set in Saudi Arabia and the author does a good job of bringing in various details from that society and culture. More than just a good murder mystery, the novel has great character development and a love interest. And even better - I did not figure out who the killer was before the end!

Read: May 2011 (on CD in my car)
Next up: City of Veils, a sequel of sorts

Sunday, May 1, 2011

The Hunger Games series (Suzanne Collins)

OMG. Please read these books now. Move them to the top of your list. Please. Trust me. I should have listened to my friends who read them last year. My sister-in-law let me borrow her set and once I picked them up I could not stop. I just had to know what was happening to Katniss Everdeen. I would even go so far as to put this series on the same playing field as Harry Potter and that is saying a lot!

I don't want to give anything away so I won't try to summarize. Plus trying to explain the plot just makes the books sound weird. They are set in a futuristic world where the Capital City controls/opresses twelve Districts. In order to remind the Districts of their control, the Capital requires each District to send two children to an arena every year to fight to the death. Katniss, a young girl, takes her sister's place in the arena and unintentionally sets a revolution in motion. Sounds bizarre (and it is) but it is just so good!

Read: March/April 2011

Bonus: They are making the books into movies!