RaveSt. Louis Post-Dispatch...beautifully written, thought-provoking and immersive ... The Vanishing Half, with its clever premise and strongly developed characters, is unputdownable.
Isabel Allende, Trans. by Nick Caistor and Amanda Hopkinson
PanSt. Louis Post-DispatchThe novel is strongest in its depictions of what innocent people endure when caught in the crosshairs of warring political parties ... Unfortunately, the book is weighed down by its flaws. To start, the dialogue is often stilted, with phrases and sentence structures divorced from how people actually speak. The novel also spans more than 50 years, and at times it feels like the author struggled with the longevity of the narrative arch. Near the end, time-jumping transitions jarringly appear in the middle of chapters. Finally, Allende’s writing is sprinkled with cringe-worthy ethnic tropes ... One could perhaps forgive her dated use of racist language, but one of her editors should have intercepted it. It is possible to evoke a time period without embracing its intolerance.
Mitch Albom
PositiveThe Associated PressTheir desperate attempts to find a cure for a notoriously incurable condition, and the many interventions Chika endures, can be difficult to read at times. Despite knowing how it ends, a reader can’t help but hope the story turns out differently ... Ultimately, Finding Chika is a touching rumination on the magic of children, the extraordinary lengths parents will go for them and the unlikely family that came together across continents.
Ronan Farrow
PositiveThe Associated Press... delivers ... part All the President’s Men, part spy thriller (the book cover evokes a noir motif), with a dash of the personal mixed in ... utterly disheartening in its revelation of widespread abuses and cover-ups, the leverage of power and money to evade accountability and the many lives that were devastated in the process.
Claire Adam
RaveAssociated Press\"Claire Adam\'s debut novel, Golden Child, is a page-turner not by dint of cliffhangers but because a reader becomes invested in the well-developed story and richly drawn characters, heightened by a baseline tension established in the first pages. Adam creates a strong sense of place to fully transport a reader to the sights, smells and sounds of rural Trinidad ... Golden Child is a beautiful and haunting tale, one that leaves readers thinking long after the last page has been turned.\
Fatima Farheen Mirza
PositiveAssociated Press\"... an affecting, authentic and artful debut ... By the end of the novel, readers may wish that some characters had spoken up at critical junctures and that other characters had swallowed the words that irreparably altered the course of events. That we become so invested is a testament to Mirza\'s talent.\
