Maya's Notebook

The premise of this book sounded so interesting to me. A young woman moves to Chile to escape from her life of drugs, crime, and prostitution. While it sounded so interesting, so much of it wasn't about the plot, but the characters. And the characters just weren't that interesting. There wasn't much to keep me reading, so I put it down. As I started writing this current blog post, I read some reviews for Maya's Notebook and couldn't find a bad one in the bunch. People loved it. With all the praise for the novel, I decided to pick it back up where I left off and try to finish it.

It took me about 20 more pages to get into the book. On about page 70, it took off and I couldn't put it down. Still, I have mixed emotions about this book. There was too much detail about the Chilean landscape and people to hold my attention in some chapters. However, it's a great book on sociology. You get to study drug addict/dealer culture and Chilean culture.

It was also a little too risque for my taste. And not even the parts when she was on the streets and in prostitution. It was the part when she was hiding on a Chilean island and met a tourist that was too much. I actually thought that whole part took away from the book.

But overall, I like the message the book gives about sex. The sex in the book is not flippant and gave a message that it can be destructive. Outside of marriage or a committed relationship, it can become an idol to worship. The relationships get confusing and can lead to devastation.

And while I usually like books with interesting narration, I didn't like the format of this narration - through Maya writing in her notebook. She ended up giving information that I found boring and not helpful for the story. Just plain old tradition first person would have been better.

The writing about her time on the streets in Vegas was riveting. The author could have built anticipation better with the going back and forth though. At times, she could leave you with a cliff hanger while she went back to present day on the island, but all in all, it could have been done better and most of the time I didn't mind waiting to see what happened.

The ending was disappointing. Saw it coming halfway through the book. You know the bad guy will lose, although I did like the questions left behind about the how it happened.

Overall, a 6.5 out of 10. And while I wouldn't recommend it, I wouldn't say it was a waste of my time.