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A review by lanikei
Sotah by Naomi Ragen
3.0
Hmm. This isn't quite trashy enough to be 'romance', but is definitely poorly written chicklit. But! It is about a culture I'm not familiar with, and I am a sucker, so I read it and enjoyed it. Despite the often ham-fisted writing and embarrassingly cliched characters.
I read some other reviews that were really angry about the portrayal of Orthodox Jews, but I wasn't left with a negative feeling about the culture. I don't know enough about Judaism, let alone this particular side of it to judge the accuracy of the book, but I didn't feel like it was exactly unfair to any society it presented. All orthodoxy contains absurd strictures that don't fit well into modern times, but also present a simplicity that I can appreciate. I felt that the author presented both sides and showed that it's not the religion that is the problem, but the corruption of religion into hate and judgement.
The story follows three sisters in Jerusalem through their teenage years which amounts to school, marriage, and babies. Each has a challenging romance/marriage, but the plot mostly follows the middle daughter Dina. Her 'perfect daughter' complex is familiar to lots of people regardless of religion, so even her mistakes seemed believable.
The author bothers to give Dina some depth over the course of the story, but most of the other characters are pretty one-sided and often are just obvious foils to Dina. Pretty much every character can be reduced to one word cliches. The main exception is the younger sister who I was particularly fond of as she raged against her life's limitations in ways I could really relate to.
Mostly I enjoyed the book for the education I got about some of the customs and cultural expectations of Orthodox Judaism. It's hardly great literature, but it held my interest and didn't devolve into awful cheesy romance sex which was my big concern based on the cover. Enjoyable laundry room find.
I read some other reviews that were really angry about the portrayal of Orthodox Jews, but I wasn't left with a negative feeling about the culture. I don't know enough about Judaism, let alone this particular side of it to judge the accuracy of the book, but I didn't feel like it was exactly unfair to any society it presented. All orthodoxy contains absurd strictures that don't fit well into modern times, but also present a simplicity that I can appreciate. I felt that the author presented both sides and showed that it's not the religion that is the problem, but the corruption of religion into hate and judgement.
The story follows three sisters in Jerusalem through their teenage years which amounts to school, marriage, and babies. Each has a challenging romance/marriage, but the plot mostly follows the middle daughter Dina. Her 'perfect daughter' complex is familiar to lots of people regardless of religion, so even her mistakes seemed believable.
The author bothers to give Dina some depth over the course of the story, but most of the other characters are pretty one-sided and often are just obvious foils to Dina. Pretty much every character can be reduced to one word cliches. The main exception is the younger sister who I was particularly fond of as she raged against her life's limitations in ways I could really relate to.
Mostly I enjoyed the book for the education I got about some of the customs and cultural expectations of Orthodox Judaism. It's hardly great literature, but it held my interest and didn't devolve into awful cheesy romance sex which was my big concern based on the cover. Enjoyable laundry room find.