So after months and months of having people recommend this book to me over and over again, I decided that now would be as good a time as any to finally give in and read it since we've got this whole 50-book thing going on, and let me tell you, I definitely see where these people are coming from...But I'm gonna have to say meh...
Chalk it up to over-hype, blame it on the fact that I just read a Salman Rushdie book about a rather similar subject (although I'm sure someone smarter than I would inform me that these subjects are not at all similar), but this book simply did not appeal to me for several reasons:
1. The main character does something so horrible in the first 50 pages that I seriously wanted nothing but bad things to happen to him for the rest of the book. Not to spoil anything...
2. Cliche runs rampant in the book and the author actually spends part of the book almost excusing why his book is so cliche. Get an imagination, Khaled!
3. I feel like it vastly oversimplifies the whole Afghanistan/Taliban/Pakistan situation. Again I don't know much about the issue at hand, but I feel like this was a book written for Americans if that makes any sense.
I will say, the story is touching, as would be any story about friendship, loss, sadness, love, etc. But it is pretty unoriginal. It's touching the way certain commercials are touching, he just knew which buttons to push. But it is separated from books like Extremely loud and Incredibly Close because it's pretty unoriginal in its touchingness. The story is good, but I just feel like you could get the same story told better by somebody else.
Basically, this is a New York Times best seller. Enjoyable plot (although you want the main character to drp dead) but not a lot of substance as literature. 5/10
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