A pulsating adventure story that has a believably violent core, adorned with a fairly rediculous literary love story.
This is a fast paced and gritty book, a harrowing tear across modern Mexico from the point of view of an enforced migrant. The story, characters, and writing are all engaging and display emotional depth.
I saw it labbled 'gringa porn' by the reviewer Black Oxford, fair enough! We do have a smorgasbord of the horrors that face many migrants today. None of it is overblown or invented however, the reality can be gruesome.
There was some very modern outrage over this book after it became popular, with many people angry that a white American wrote a book from a perspective that is not her's, but this has no bearing on me, I read a lot of sci-fi and don't insist it is written by hyper intelligent ouctopi from the future. Some of the Spanish, especially the slang, and cultural flourishes may be off, I'm not sure.
For me a bigger issue is a plot point that could be entirely exercised without damaging the emotional hit or story of the book, it would even improve it. The shared love of literature and the chance meeting of the main character and the bad guy is unbelievable, in the literal sense. Everything else could have remained without that link.
Some of the writing is a little clunky "she felt like an egg. But she could not tell if she were the yolk, white or shell. She was scrambled." ha! But it only stood out to me a few times. I happed to also be reading Cormack McCarthy's "Cities of the Plain" and while any comparison to that is inherently unfair, suffice to say there is a desert between them.
The epilogue seems to eliminate the easiest route to a sequel, an immediate continuation, though pleanty of space remains for that!