Waldman tries to tap into a lot of hard hitting issues in this book about war, culture, power, perception and race. While the writing is beautiful, this book fell way short for me.

Parveen's naivety was so persistent it was almost insulting. It was like listening to an uneducated teenager tell everyone around them about how the world should be based on their limited understanding. I get that Parveen is only in college and that the way the story is told through Parveen's eyes helps to identify the complexities of these subjects but it feels as if there is an assumption that the audience is dumb.

I wouldn't want to spend ten minutes with Parveen let alone seeing her perspective for 400 pages. I think I would have preferred the book if it came from the perspective on an omnipresent narrator where Parveen was one of the characters. I think that would have worked to lift the audience up a little.

If anything this book does serve to highlight the lack of understanding from entitled people who think they can fix everything with little context or appreciation of the culture they are trying to "help".

I've never given a book one star before but this book took me forever to get through. I kept looking for excuses to anything else and I genuinely didn't enjoy it.