There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak

I sent the photo above to my friend who recommended me this book with the message “This book is so poorly written that it made my vase sad and my flowers die” which pretty much sums up my review. However, not all bad and I did finish it, the story got much darker and more interesting toward the end. Rather, stories – the book is about three people across three timelines: the most interesting follows a genius victorian london urchin from sewer to the british museum and to istanbul and mesopotamia as he is the first to translate cuneiform tablets the second is the tragedy of a young Yazidi girl who’s life goes from bad to Isis in 2014 the third is a present day woman and her story is as extraneous as it is unconvincing. Anyway, all these characters terrible dialogue reads the same regardless of era. The titular water theme is unmercifully rammed down your throat at all times. That being said the victorian character was interesting, exciting, and sad in places and I enjoyed his bit…