If you think Googling yourself is pathetic, then sorry,but you’re not a writer. Neurotic is my middle name daahlink, no matter how good I am at hiding it (wink).
By now I pretty much know Google first five pages of results by heart, but today guess what popped up on librarything.com - a review! A long, meaty one too.
“I really enjoyed this lovely novel about working women who are making changes and trying to either hold on to the place that they’ve created for themselves in the world, but at the same time working toward expansion and growth. The women aren’t necessarily friends with each other; in fact both George and Joe are both taken with Ranya, much to the dismay of Zahra and Rio, who are at odds with each other with other over the magazine that Rio edits. That was a wonderful change from the regular script of friends working together to overcome the odds - o matter what their differences, and competing interests, they have to work together either to solve a problem or to maintain the status quo with the men in their lives.The characters were well-developed and the novel, which is told through their alternating perspectives, is consistent in their characterization, and it was easy to follow their stories. I like that I got a different view of the lives of Middle Eastern women. It was really refreshing to see a different type of Middle Eastern woman’s life, ones that I wasn’t sure existed. While Ranya’s family definitely has cut her off and wants her to come back home, she has been educated and is adored by her family, and her mother is genuinely concerned about her and the problems that she is having in her marriage. Ranya is just like any other spoiled child who defies her parents and finds that she has to make her way on her own for awhile. In contrast, Zahra is from a poorer Palestinian family who is relying on her to make their fortune.
Rio is constantly trying to keep her place in a male-dominated world after struggling to overcome her poor Honduran upbringing, and struggles with her identity as a darker-skinned, curvaceous woman in a place like Miami, which is dominated by a beach ideal that she does not fit. Rio is such a rich character and her point of view was deeply nuanced, but I was still disturbed to see that she had the most explicit and the highest number of sexual encounters in the novel. But I cared about her, as I cared about all of them. I was particularly interested in the way that Zahra would deal with her family concerns as they competed with her interests and I wanted to know how she would work that out.
Cutting Loose was a great read with a lot more depth than you would expect from the girls-gone-wild cover. I was wary of the book when seeing the cover, but glad that I continued to read because it was a lovely surprise.”
Thanks, Daniellnic!
