- This is pure populist American garbage. I read the first 100 pages and then threw it at the wall. It was absurd and intensely annoying, full of cliches and stereotypes that would make Trump proud - 'Mexico bad, the US good'.
- What is surprising is the accolades it has received from much revered writers like Ann Patchett ('I couldn't put it down. I'll never stop thinking about it'), Don Winslow ('A Grapes of Wrath for our times'), Tracy Chevalier ('Essential reading'), and many others.
- It's TexMex fodder, not real Mexican food. It's Starbucks, not Melbourne cafe quality. And it's a typical John Grisham-style chase novel, thrillers of the dullest, plotless, sort.
- The opening pages give the game away immediately. The extended family of the main characters, the mother and her son, are massacred by one of the vicious drug running cartels who've taken over Apapulco.
- This really is populist nonsense, and it's littered with silliness. Just one example: Luca, the son, (the feminine version of Lucas, by the way), is a seven year old ‘genius’ whose first words as a toddler were 'Let's read that once again Mami, except this time let's make it a more agreeable ending'!
- There's currently a raging debate about this book being a perfect example of cultural appropriation. And it is, but in a base unsophisticated way. The author barely tries to give her characters realistic Mexican identities, however much 'research' she claims to have done. If that was her intention she's failed dismally. She's just written a populist action novel. There's no depth or sophistication here.
- (Read these excellent reviews: David Bowles in Medium, David Schmidt’s piece in The Blue Nib, and Myriam Gurba's brilliant piece in Tropics of Meta).
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