Saving Sophie: A Novel

The book was so interesting, explaining about the conflict between Israel & the Palestinian people. So many of the people would like peace, but are thwarted by the terrorist faction. And the intrigue with the main character finding Sopie was exciting.

Saving Sophia was an extremely well written that kept the reader engaged from the very first sentence to the last. The inclusion of Middle East history was an important part of the context of the story. I highly recommend this novel to readers of all ages.

I recommend this book to everyone who can learn about the Arab-Israeli conflict &the Palestinian terrorist organization. The story involving Sophies kidnapping made reading the book more plAusible &emotjonal.

This book will be interesting for those who hear repeated “keywords” on the morning news as background noise while going to work and don’t really know what is going on. Perhaps they cannot find the West Bank or Gaza on any map; they would like to but haven’t discovered a painless or entertaining way to do so. This book fills the bill as historical fiction with a heavy influence on the historical. The fiction is clearly identified by the author in endnotes. As with any emotional, currently controversial, in-the-news issue, hardcore ideologues will disagree with some points calling them “alleged facts”, but that is what reader-response criticism is all about.

I gave the book only three stars because while I liked the history part a lot (more than four stars) I found the narrative setting, the way the story was told, boring to unrealistic. Financial crime combined with basketball score fixing, combined with criminal mafia activity seemed to struggle in stretching to encompass (by the way) a kidnapping. The kidnapping was to be the central driver for the book. Along with historical animosities. There are many conflicts throughout the book; to describe their resolutions would be to write spoilers.

Jack lost a wife due to terrible disease. He promised her he would take care of daughter Sophie, but Sophie was kidnapped by extremist/potential terrorist Father-in-law. Even Dr. Father-in-law could not explain the invisible hand help he had in accomplishing the kidnapping. Jack, up to the time of the kidnapping, was a morally perfect person. The financial crime was understandable to support rescue efforts and return Sophie to Jack. The story proceeds in a fairly predictable way, but the writing is good except for the points where Jack retreats (repeatedly) into his mind to reflect on why bad things happen to innocent people (himself). He also spends a great amount of time rationalizing immoral, or at least unethical, methods to achieve moral, justifiable ends. These internal musings and flashbacks are a bit annoying and can happen under any circumstance, such as when he is receiving background (historical) information from a beautiful, rogue spy he has met. This is the unrealistic part.

Spies are human too. They exhibit human behavior both bad and good but perhaps at more clearly defined extremes. Kayla, the possible rogue spy, is quite willing to sacrifice Sophie to achieve her own ends. OK, that is realistic. Close to the end of the book (not a spoiler) Liam makes a statement (paraphrase) [there are more people like Kayla…] to which Jack replies “Racism will never win out. It’s flawed in every sense because love is much stronger than hate.” Meanwhile Kayla, rogue agent who was willing to kill Sophie but at the same time was thinking about sleeping with Jack, “smiles proudly” as she hears Jack’s affirmation of his moral base. I found these to be syrupy sweet conclusive statements that did not fit with the potential outcomes that made up an otherwise interesting story.

Despite my negative impression of several parts of the book, the historical part was so good I would read the book again and recommend it to those with minimal knowledge of this ongoing conflict.

I read this because I enjoyed Once we were Brothers. This book does not have the depth or the interest of that book. It was a very simple story line. No surprises. The characters were one dimensional. Good or bad. There was a romance or two, but even there, we see no conflict, nothing to hold us to this story. Very disappointing.

The book is full of suspense with multiple sub-plots, well developed and likeable characters. The reader is engaged at the first page of the book and author keeps you guessing until the satisfying finish. Great read.