My Rating 2.5 stars

I feel like maybe something was lost in translation or maybe this book just wasn't for me either way this book was a lot. The only reason I ended up finishing it is because I kept thinking it has to get better right? Sadly I was wrong.

The entirety of this book is focused on a love triangle, as well as men vying for power, success, and sex, and the women are just play things for them it seems, and are obsessed and willing to drop anything to be with them.

Every single character in this book is horrible no one seems to have any redeeming qualities at all that I can find that balance out the above-mentioned issues.

Overall this book seems to be about the consequences of lying in order to get ahead in life and how pretending to be this whole other person will eventually come back to bite you which is exactly what happened to Sam Tahar. Sam's pretending to be Samuel who was his best friend in college, is the only way he feels he can have success in his life as he is Arab. So Sam decided to pretend to be him in order to get a job, and then from there it just spiraled into him pretending for every part of his life. The real Samuel meanwhile has had very little success and is stuck in a pattern of self-loathing and hatred. The woman they are both in love with Nina chooses the real Samuel after he threatened to kill himself if she left. This has left her in a precarious situation, of just going back and forth between two different types of abusive relationships, and is just a terrible situation. While the book is split up into three different parts, each part just gets progressively worse for the characters until finally by the third act part two of them have lost everything, and one is having the success that he doesn't really enjoy either.

The only reason this book is getting 2.5 stars is because of how the writing just kept me hoping that it was going to change and get better in the third act.

Would not recommend anyone read this if they like to have at least some redeemable qualities about characters.

Strange novel what could probably have some appeal for specific target groups - European/American immigrants (mostly muslims of second/third generation), maybe people with Jewish origin...I am not trying to be sarcastic here. I just feel very much disconnected from the world of this novel about a lawyer living his American dream based on false statement that he is a Jew with difficult upbringing - while he is a muslim (also with difficult upbringing) and about his poor nemesis, fellow student and friend Samuel - and Nina, who had chosen Samuel at the end of their time together. And about the unraveling of these lives. There is just nothing connecting me to those people during the course of the book, they are simply unpleasant people. The motif is also quite unrealistic and the novel is dragged around the cause I have no understanding (nor sympathy, as I don´t like fake/boring people) for.

Not my favorite. The prose was long and rambling, and I didn't enjoy the themes at all.

I truly enjoy this book, it kept me reading till the end. I would certainly be reading more of this amazing author. I suggest you read it, you will certainly won’t be disappointed. I usually don't read this type of books, but I read the summary and got very interested. Thank you for the opportunity I will look forward for more from this author.

If I wanted to give a judgement about this book just based on the empathy I felt in respect of the characters, I had to use a negative number. The protagonist is an huge selfish, that uses an alleged racial discrimination in respect of his being from North Africa to lie to everyone and play one against the other at his exlusive consumption. His wife is a woman without thickness, hold up out of money and stereotypes. His childhood friend is a failure that shows the true extent of his failure at the very moment that succeds in becoming a published writer. The woman that the two somehow exchange is little more than an inflatable doll, and her shy regain possessionof herself at the end of the novel is not enough to change the judgement on her. All minor characters act out a role and they are predestined to go the way they do.
In short, a disaster, not improved by the alternate narrative of what happens to and fro from the ocean, where Samir and his alter ego Samuel lead their lives. I confess to having used the fast reading mode, which usually do not use for novels, for whole sections of the book, which otherwise which otherwise I wouldn't hold up. However, there are some interesting and well written descriptions, especially towards the end, which eventually convinced me to give the two starlets.
Thank Atria Books and Netgalley for giving me a free copy in exchange for an honest review.