The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul: The heart-warming and uplifting international bestseller

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It’s a good few years ago since I read the other books by the author in this trilogy but the author does a good job in writing the story in a way that certain parts triggered my memory and there is also enough information given so you don’t feel you are missing any background on the characters, making it easy to read as a standalone. However, the two Afghan women who feature in the book, Halajan and Yazmina, are absolute powerhouses who command the novel with their unexpected strength and spirit. Although my overall verdict for this novel is positive, I couldn't help but feeling at certain points that I was reading a weakly scripted feminist soap opera. Due to my love of reading I thought I would set up a blog to share with people my thoughts on the books i've read.

Yazmina is a young woman from a remote village; when she's kidnapped and left on a city street, pregnant and alone, Sunny gives her a home - but all Yazmina wants is to find a way to rescue her sister from the same fate. It was obvious from the first page of her introduction that Wakil was only using her for money yet the author stretched out this thinner than crepe paper story till the end of the book. I found myself completey immersed in another world and felt as though I came to know the characters of this story intimately.Sunny has already been in Afghanistan a while at the beginning of the book but both Candace and Isabel are new, although Isabel has previously been in war torn countries but in Africa. Yazmina now runs a pair of women’s shelters from the old cafe, and dreams of a bright future for her two young daughters. Our books regularly hit the bestseller lists, and we have powered countless authors to household-name status.

Of course, I could have had a good guess from the setting alone, this would be a story set against a backdrop of violence and war, but that was pretty much my only reference point. When must one choose to set aside the strict mores of religious and/or cultural tradition and embrace flexibility? Halajan is the only character of interest with her no bullshit attitude, long hidden forbidden love story and passion for Rumi, but she alone is not enough to save this book from saccharine tedium.

Sunny, an American woman, is the owner and along with her Afghan employees her coffee house is home to a mixed variety of people: a British journalist, a country widow, a wealthy American named Candace and the pregnant Yasmina.