Saturday, April 26, 2014

The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing



 The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing
by Mira Jacob

Genre:  Fiction
Pages:  512
Published:  7/1/14 by Random House
Format: Advanced Reader's Copy

My rating:
4.5 out of 5 stars







The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing is an epic family saga centered on an Indian immigrant family. Thomas, a brain surgeon, immigrated from India to New Mexico to start a new life with his family and to escape the demands of his overbearing mother and familial responsibilities in India. The story opens with Kamala, Thomas' wife, urging her grown daughter Amina to come home from Seattle because Thomas was talking to "people" who were not really there. When Amina arrives at home to help, she discovers more secrets about her family's past and her father's condition.

I really enjoyed this book. It was well written and well paced, an overall great read!  When I first read the synopsis and looked at the 500 page length, I wasn't sure that it would hold my attention. But it truly did, from start to finish, I was hooked. It reminded me at times of Cutting for Stone, another book I enjoyed. The characters were a lot of fun, the dialogue was very realistic, it was funny at times, it was sad at times. I thought it was just a great novel in so many ways

Mira Jacob expertly writes this story alternately using flashbacks and the present story to weave this novel together. I thought the pacing was just perfect. For such a lengthy novel, there was not really a "slow" part. Each section ended with enough of a cliffhanger to keep me turning pages, eager to see what the next section would hold.

I received an advance copy of this book through Library Thing Early Reviewers. The novel is set to be released on July 1, 2014, and I would highly recommend checking it out!