Eddie's Desert Rose - Vincent Meis

Rating             3/5

Review for and on behalf of the Kindle Book Review

This story follows two brothers, Dave and Eddie, who are looking to make fast money teaching English in Saudi Arabia.

 

Dave feels protective towards his younger brother, as a result of their disruptive childhood and when Eddie dies in an ‘accident’ Dave is hit hard, and begins to question the official version of events and realises all is not as it seems.

 

Meis has created a fast paced story that takes place in a number of locations across the world. He uses his own experience of teaching in Saudi Arabia to paint a picture of a dark, secretive and oppressive society.

 

The story progresses well and after a long spell away from reading, kept me engaged throughout. There are some bits that I found a little far fetched (for example Maura finding Khalil in Paris and the ‘Mr. Sunglasses’ character). It felt in places that Meis had a lot he wanted to get into this story (domestic abuse, the life a gay man, women in Saudi Arabia, government collusion, the role of Oil and money in Saudi / US relations, and I think the story suffered in places for this. If Meis had restricted the number of threads, he might have been able to do much better justice to the remaining ones. It would have been nice to have delved a little deeper into the relationship between Dave, Eddie, their mother and Maura; in some places these relationships felt a little shallow.

 

That said, this is a nice, engaging read and an eye opener about life in 1980’s Saudi Arabia. I look forward to seeing Meis’ writing style develop further in his future books.