City of Saints and Thieves

I was intrigued by City of Saints and Thieves because it was one of Barnes and Noble's Discover Great New Writers selections, but it was also YA. I've never seen a Teen book make this list.

The story follows Christina aka Tina aka Tiny Girl aka Tiny. Tina is an excellent thief. She has to be; it was the only way to avoid becoming a prostitute on the streets of Sangui City. She works with the Goondas, a street gang in the city, to make her living--and work toward taking revenge on the man who killed her mother.

When her mother first brought Tina to Kenya from Congo, she found a job as a maid for Roland Greyhill, an American businessman. There, she spends five (7? Can't remember) easy years of childhood, plays with Greyhill's son, Michael, and gets a new sister. But everything changes when her mother is murdered. Tina, 12 years old, takes her sister and flees to the streets because she knows exactly who killed her mom: Mr. Greyhill.

Tina stashes her sister in a nun-run school where she was able to get a scholarship, then goes to the head of the Goondas for help in taking revenge. She wants to kill Mr. Greyhill. But he has other ideas--among them taking Mr. Greyhill's extensive fortune. So he gives Tina a book: The Count of Monte Cristo (and c'mon, this is my all time favorite book. How could I not love this?!) So Tina decides the best formula for revenge is: 1. Dirt. 2. Money. 3. Blood.

So when she gets a chance to break into the house to copy info from Greyhill's computer, she takes it. With a little support from computer genius Bug Boy, she gets all the info she needs tot ake Greyhill down.

She also gets caught.

She has to spend the next week with Mr. Greyhill's son, Michael, who convinces her to try and find proof that his father did it--because Michael is positive he didn't.

This was a whole different type of mystery that was absolutely impacted by the setting. The situation is dire: Tina is beholden to this game, they're chasing down a murderer, being chased by murderers and militia. The book taking place in war-torn Africa just added a new element to what otherwise would have been a typical Nancy Drew type mystery. Tina has much greater concerns than whether her friends will betray her (she knows they will) or what clothes to wear (she lives on a roof, for goodness sake). She has to figure out how to survive on a daily basis.

And there are no happy endings like in your typical YA story. Tina doesn't fix Africa. She doesn't take down the bad guys or a corrupt government. She solves a mystery that has deeply affected her life, and then her life goes back to normal-stealing and surviving.

It was a phenomenal story, and the narrator was spectacular. I cried a few times. I can't imagine a life like many in Africa live. This is my second book recently that takes place there and deals with that violence, and it's horrifying. But I do hope more books are written (and read) about it.

How Dare the Sun Rise

I decided to change it up with some non-fiction this time. A few of the authors I read and follow on Twitter were talking about it a few months ago, and since I needed a change, I decided to borrow it.

I'M SO GLAD I DID BECAUSE IT WAS AMAZING!

I mean, it's someone's life, so how do you say it isn't amazing? But Sandra, who is only 23, has faced so much. And while it seems like a lot to me, a privileged white girl who lives in the U.S., there are thousands of people who have similar experiences to hers.

Sandra spent her childhood in the Republic of Congo, but her tribe is from Rwanda. There is a lot of prejudice toward Rwandans from the Congolese, so even though they lived in a nice house and her parents had good jobs, they always knew their lives could change in a moment. She is one of 7 kids, and her oldest brother was kidnapped and turned into a child soldier. Even though they got him back a few years later, he was injured and traumatized from his experiences. Sandra was the second youngest, only a few years older than her younger sister Deborah. Her childhood sounds pretty typical: going to school, playing with friends, following older siblings around and mimicking them.

Then they learns soldiers are coming, and they become refugees in their own country. They pack everything they can fit in a car, and a driver takes them from their home. They get attacked on the way, most of their possessions are stolen, but they finally make it to a refugee camp. The camp is the kind of place where everyone lives in tents, bathrroms are holes in the grpund, and you have to stand in line for food and water. There is never enough of either. It's drastically different from the way she spent most of her childhood, but that doesn't last either.

The camp gets attacked. People are being shot as they try to leave their tents. The men outside Sandra's tent tell them they won't hurt them, they will keep them safe. Her mother is the first to come out, holding her younger sister Deborah on her hip. Multiple shots are fired at them and they both fall to the ground.

Man, I'm crying just trying to type this up.

Sandra runs the other way, manages to make it out of the tent, but gets caught and a man holds a gun to her head and prepares to shoot her. Keep in mind, she is 10 years old. He gets distracted and she manages to escape into the woods, the blaze of their camp lighting the way. It was called the massacre at Gatumba. The men who led it stepped forward to brag about the 166 lives they destroyed and they were never brought to justice.

It was SO. HARD. TO READ. I knew it would be.

In the rest of the book, she finds her family, they apply to move to America as refugees, and they are accepted. The family faces a whole new set of challenges: learning English, figuring out American food, fitting in at schools, facing microaggressions, flashbacks, and more.

Sandra now speaks about her experiences and tries to bring awareness about what's going on in her country. She's spoken at the UN, shared the stage with Angelina Jolie and Oprah Winfrey, and all this before she was 20. She is the cofounder of Jimbere fund, an organization that helps rural communities in Congo.

Her book was incredible. I definitely recommend it to...well, pretty much everyone.