SEPTEMBER WRAP UP: Books I Read This Month

Hi everyone! Welcome back to Bibliophilia Book Reviews. Today, I’m reviewing the books I read in September. I read 7 books this month. Here are my thoughts on them:

1. HISTORICAL FICTION AND THRILLER: The Blood of the Innocent (La sangre de los inocentes) by Julia Navarro

Julia Navarro is a very popular and prolific Spanish author of historical fiction thrillers. Her books are everywhere and they have been translated into more than 30 languages worldwide. The Blood of the Innocent, published in 2007, is a standalone thriller set in three different timelines―the 13^th century, 1939, and today. All of these timelines are linked together by the phrase: “Someday, somebody will avenge the blood of the innocent,” which sums up both the theme and topic(s) of the entire novel: religious fanaticism, bigotry, and an intergenerational promise of vengeance against the “other”.

In the 13^th century, the massacre of the Cathars occurred when Crusader forces breached the city of Béziers and slaughtered thousands of inhabitants, both Cathar and local Catholics who refused to hand them over (Christian History Institute). On March 16^th, 1244, the final Cathar stronghold fell when roughly 220 unrepentant Cathars were burned alive in a massive bonfire. The total extinction of the Cathars occurred after a 20-year military campaign and subsequent Medieval inquisition hunted them down and killed them (Annals of Burns and Fire Disasters).

In 1939, an agnostic medieval scholar and professor travels throughout Nazi Berlin looking for his Jewish wife, who was taken by the SS during a pogrom. And in the last timeline, where the enemy are Islamic radicals, a terrorist attack in Frankfurt alarms the European Union’s Counter-Terrorism Centre and puts the Vatican’s secret service on high alert.

This book is a critique of the violence and crimes people commit “in the name of God” for the simple fact that the “other” does not have the same values and beliefs as they do. It is a book that criticizes the innumerable number of atrocities committed by religious fanatics and bigots who do not accept that difference, and it is a book that tells us that these will continue to happen if we cannot accept those differences. Religious bigotry is still a problem today, and the political wars we are living today―as well as wars of the past―, most of them are and have been religious wars.

This book is historically well-researched and well-written. However, I do think that some people will think it is too long. Of all three timelines, the one set in 1939 was the most devastating and sad. I also think that the author did a good job linking this timeline with the third and final timeline of the novel. However, the ending was not particularly my favorite. I did not like how the book ended, and I have not picked up another one of this author’s books precisely because I think that her endings aren’t really that good. Also, the main female character of this timeline was the least likeable of all the protagonists and the one that I had a harder time to connect with.

2. NONFICTION AND TRUE CRIME: The Man No One Believed: The Untold Story of the Georgia Church Murders by Joshua Sharpe

This book is a work of literary journalism that recounts how Harold and Thelma Swain, two Black American members of Rising Daughter Baptist Church in Woodbine, Georgia, were brutally murdered by a white man in 1985. It is also an account of how the author worked exhaustively to exonerate the man, Dennis Perry, who was wrongly convicted and imprisoned for the crime in 2000. Twenty-six years later, the case is still not solved.

However, this book could’ve been better. While I have deep respect and empathy for the people whose lives were affected by this heinous crime, I wasn’t particularly fond of the writing style. The book starts out strong with the author recounting and dramatizing how the crime took place, but that’s it. From Chapter 2, the book starts to fall apart. The chapters feel disjointed and all over the place, starting with the police investigation and how Dennis Perry became a suspect. But the worst part was the ending. It felt very much like the author said, I researched this crime and helped exonerate Perry; the new suspect is this person. My work here is done, the end. Also, the book is too short for us to feel the emotion and impact that such a crime as this has on the lives of the people it affects.

3. NONFICTION AND POLITICS: One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad

This book is a “sharp critique of Western liberalism, hypocrisy, and the way mainstream institutions and centrists look away from global atrocities―only to claim opposition long after it no longer carries any real-world consequence” (Wikipedia). I picked this up expecting a historical and political account of the events leading up to October 7^th, 2023, and why such an atrocity happened when it did. However, this is not what we get. In this book, the author is outraged by the attack on Israel but he is even more outraged that the West “condoned the world’s first live-streamed genocide.” Where are the morality and the conscience of the West?  Someday, when the West’s skin is no longer in the game, it will be outraged. But today is not that day, he says.

This book is a call to conscience and to do what is right. It is the author’s break-up letter with the West, and encourages those who are doing so to stop looking away from the massacre and say something. Stop, he says, practicing the politics of silence.

4. CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE: Bridesmaid for Hire by Meghan Quinn

In this novel, the protagonists are easy to connect with. Both Maggie and Brody face challenges at work that we all do; like them, most of us have worked hard to get a promotion, deal with people we don’t like, deal with clients and hold their hand, and, not necessarily but most frequently for entrepreneurs, market our business.

On the personal side, Brody is the good guy with the bad boy persona. The good man who pretends to be a player, and who gets put in seriously awkward and messed up situations because of it. He is the guy girls have a soft spot for; the guy that our hearts go out to when see how many mishaps and bad situations he gets himself into; the guy we liken to a puppy. We just want to pick him up and cuddle him.

I liked Brody. His best quality is selflessness. He always puts the people he loves first. However, there were things about this book that I had issues with. For starters, the book has a fair amount of adult language in it. I get that the coarseness and foulness of that language are sometimes part of what makes a scene funny and a laugh-out-loud moment. Yet, I am one of those people that can only tolerate so much of this kind of language and it got to a point where the rough language started to rub me the wrong way. I also didn’t appreciate that we were constantly reminded how much clothing the FMC didn’t have. But my biggest issue with this novel was the setup. I had a very hard time connecting and rooting for the female protagonist. When she agrees to fake-date the male protagonist, the cost for her (the agreement between the leads has to cost something) isn’t that substantial or life-altering. In other words, the stakes aren’t high enough. Yes, she wants to expand her business and open a storefront but that is something we learn about much later on in the novel. It isn’t something on the line until after she has agreed to fake-date the male protagonist and is discovered by the antagonist.

5. NONFICTION AND SCIENCE: The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World by Steve Brusatte

I learned a lot about dinosaurs reading this book. But it was a slug to get through at times, especially when the author recounted personal stories and how he became a paleontologist. Don’t get me wrong, I love paleontology and I love a good book about paleontology but this book digresses a lot from the science. There are also a lot of tangents, where the author imagines, dramatizes and writes about what life (or lack thereof) would have been like on Earth after each one of the its massive extinctions, including that of dinosaurs. I understand why the author does this, and I think that they are important to include in order to understand the overall topic of the book, but some of these tangents are just too long and far too novelistic. In my opinion, the author was trying really hard to put a novelistic touch to his narration that detracted it from the objectivity of science and did it a disservice. I had to put this book down several times and read something else before actually finishing it.

6. CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE: The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren

Christina Lauren is a well-known writing duo that has published several popular standalone contemporary romance novels together. Their writing style is a fast-paced narrative where characters flirt with one another through snappy and witty banter that highlights the chemistry between the two leads and drives the story forward. I liked that. I liked that the authors are very careful at writing the story in a way that is not coarse and abrasive. The writing, in my opinion, is focused on the development of the romantic relationship. My only issue with this book is the setup. Anna and Liam begin their relationship as two strangers who get married to afford family housing at UCLA. Once they graduate, they get divorced. However, when Liam arrives at Anna’s doorstep three years later, he realizes that she didn’t read the fine print on the “divorce” papers (because they were not divorce papers) and that they are still married. The fact that Anna didn’t realize this during the three years they were apart is hard to believe. I mean, if she’d paid her taxes, she’d noticed. I also think that despite the fact that Liam is the book boyfriend we all fantasize about and swoon over, there is a touch of the unrealistic in his character. I mean, who is romanticizing billionaires in this time and economy? Not anyone I know, and nobody they know either so this premise is a tidbit improbable it borders on the fantastic.

7. NONFICTION AND MEMOIR: What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton

In these pages, Hillary Clinton “describes what it was like to run against Donald Trump, the mistakes she made, how she has coped with a shocking and devastating loss, and how she found the strength to pick herself back up afterward” (Goodreads). Nobody’s perfect and Hillary Clinton certainly isn’t (I think she’d be the first person to admit that), but I sincerely think that she genuinely wanted to help people when she ran for president in 2016 against Donald Trump. But she had a few disadvantages she couldn’t shake off: first, she’d been in the political scene of the country far too long to even been given that chance and two, she was inevitably linked to both her husband’s and Obama’s administrations and anyone who didn’t like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama was not going to vote for her. She is also a woman, and, sad to say, many people still have issues with women “doing a man’s job.” I remember, as a schoolgirl, my teachers not letting me help boys move benches or tables around whenever we needed to because that was something only boys did. And other women are the worst ones about this too. 

Donald Trump was the new and fresh face on the ticket. He was also a white rich guy, and other white rich guys were always going to choose him over the ‘other’; the woman. And sadly, they were not the only ones. The population voted based not on who was more competent for the job but on who had the Y-chromosome. And 2016 is not going to be the only general election in which this happens. It will keep happening because it has already happened again, in the 2026 Texas Democratic primary for the US Senate. Jasmine Crockett lost to James Talarico because she is a woman, even though she has more experience in the Legislative branch of government than Talarico by far.

In this book, Clinton admits her defeat but also says that that defeat made her stronger.  Despite the devasting loss, she knows that winning, in the future, is not impossible.

That is everything for this month. Hope you stop by again.