I just spent half an hour reading many of the comments on Goodreads. Clearly this book struck many nerves, and I hear the concerns on both sides. As an author, I believe that if I do my research, humbly and with an open heart, I can come close to inhabiting the subjectivity of--for example--a young, disenfranchised woman in 1870s London whose brother has just been murdered. But inhabiting the consciousness of someone in the present day--particularly someone of a different race or culture, when people are very much living that experience--is a much more challenging endeavor, requiring the most delicate of sensibilities. The conflict I see is that this book is not set up in a way to permit a nuanced exploration of the situation in which Lydia finds herself (being a bookseller in Acapulco, whose husband has written a tell-all on the new drug jefe and has been murdered for it) because fundamentally, this book is one long chase scene. This structure of escalating threats makes it a successful "page-turner"--and indeed, I felt the tension mounting throughout and stayed up much too late reading--but I think that tension comes at the expense of nuance. Still, the fact that the book can stir up such feeling in so many people, and has caused people to generate lists of books I now want to read, tells me it's a productive book. I'm glad I read it, if only to see what everyone's talking about.
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