Bashert

by Herb Freed

[chymerra]

I didn’t know what to expect when I started reading Bashert. See, I had gotten an email from NetGalley with their Read Nows. I kinda did a book nerd’s version of drunken Amazon shopping. Except I wasn’t drinking and it wasn’t Amazon. I thought that I had downloaded a book that at its best would bore me to sleep. At its worse, it would completely bore me. I fell somewhere in the middle with Bashert.

I had a hard time following Bashert’s plotline. The book kept jumping from past to present to past. It confused the ever-living out of me. I ended up rereading chapters to understand exactly what was going on. Now keeping what I wrote in mind, I thought that the plotline was original. I wished I could have followed it better.

What intrigued me about this book was that the author didn’t gloss over Dan and Marion’s bad times. He let us know that love wasn’t all sunshine and roses. That there will be dark and turbulent days. It is up to the people to get through them. Which Dan and Marion did. They faced life’s greatest challenges together. Dan always supported Marion and vice versa.

I liked Dan and I got his skepticism when Molly told him that she had talked to Marion. But the more the events in Jamaica unrolled, the more his skepticism was chipped away.

The end of the book confused me. I ended up reading the last chapter a few times and I couldn’t figure out what the author wanted us to think. Not going to get into it but I thought one thing. When I read it out loud to my SO, with a quick briefing on the book, he thought another. I guess we could both be right.

What I liked about Bashert:

A) The locations the book was set in

B) The storyline

C) Dan and Marion’s love story, the good and bad

What I disliked about Bashert:

A) Plot hard to follow

B) Jamaica. With everything going on, the whole festival storyline added to me not being able to follow the book.

C) The end of the book

I would give Bashert a rating of Older Teen. There is language. There is sex and sexual situations. The sex/sexual situations are very vague. There is mild violence. I would recommend that no one under the age of 16 read this book.

There are trigger warnings in the book. They would be: Drug use

I am on the fence about recommending this book to family and friends. I would let them know the plotline and let them make their own decision. I would give them a heads up about the trigger warning.

I am on the fence about rereading this book. On one hand, I want to because I find the whole concept of Bashert fascinating. On the other hand, I don’t because the book confused me too much.