City of Saints and Thieves, by Natalie C. Anderson, follows
Christina aka Tiny Girl and her adventure throughout Africa to find her
mother’s killer. Along the way, Tina finds out the truth about her mother’s
past before coming to Kenya as a refugee. Tina is a thief involved in a gang
called the Goondas, and she enlists her gangs help to get revenge on the man
who killed her mother. But… things don’t end up going quite per plan as she
learns more and more about her mother’s life.
I didn’t read the synopsis at all before reading this book,
I just knew it involved a thief, and I honestly thought it would just involve a
heist. But this book is so much more than that. When I first read that the
setting is in Kenya, I was very surprised, but excited to read a book in this
setting; as I hadn’t read any books in this setting before. I love learning
about other cultures, so books set in other countries interest me. But my
expectations did fall a little short. I loved the integration of the Swahili
language into this book. Besides this
integration and the author stating that the setting was in Kenya, I felt that
this could be set in any country, despite the war on gold. I honestly imagined
Sangui City to be like any city in the United States, and it very well may be like
that in the author’s mind. I expected more of a cultural influence in the book,
though, and I feel as if I didn’t learn much about the cultures of Kenya and
Congo.
This is a great story, and a very quick read. I did enjoy
it. Overall, I’d give this book a 3.75 stars.
*SPOILERS*
The story itself was great, and I found little about it that
I didn’t like. I felt like Tina is a strong character, and you can see that in
the way she cares for her sister; like when she went to such depths to save
Kiki from Omoko killing her. However, I thought the characters needed a little
more description when being introduced. This may just have been me not catching
on, but it took me until around 300 pages to figure out that Mr. Greyhill was a
white man from the United States. I thought he was born and raised in Africa,
and could not figure out why someone would call Michael a mulatto.
Another aspect of this book that I found lacking was the
suspense. I felt as if the author was trying to bring suspense into the book,
but I only found myself holding my breath when Christina was breaking into Mr.
G’s office. There was some suspense when Boyboy couldn’t get hold of Mr. G, but
I had faith that he would have a plan.
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