Book Review: The Cairo Diary by Maxime Chattam

Read from June 21 to July 01, 2016

"British-occupied Cairo, 1928: " Several young children have disappeared and were then found, horribly mutilated, in the tombs just outside the city. Panic is spreading among the locals after a cloaked giant is sighted. Has a ghoul from "One Thousand and One Nights" been brought to life? British inspector Jeremy Matheson follows the trail of the monster, which takes him into the depths of underground Cairo as well as deep into his own tortured past.
"Mont-Saint-Michel, 2005: " Marion has taken refuge in the wind-swept and remote monastery located on a spit of land on the west coast of France. In the wake of a scandal, caused by her own revelations, that is now reverberating through the French capital, she has been spirited away from Paris and brought here by the Secret Service for her own protection. When she finds a diary dating from 1928 in the monastery library, penned by Jeremy Matheson and hidden inside the jacket of an Edgar Allen Poe book, she is inexorably pulled into the past as she is being watched, and taunting notes and riddles urge her to give back what is not hers. . .

The Cairo Diary had an interesting plot behind it and I was truly caught up in the mystery of the moment. But at the same time not everything made sense to me.

I'm not a big fan of Marion since I found her actions too frustrating at times. I wasn't interested in her story at all really and I feel the author drew out her part of the story for too long.

I found 1920s Cairo more interesting than the Mount Saint Michel time period. The ghul was very interesting honestly and the whole noma thing intrigued me a lot! Haha! The ghul was the star of the story for me! Haha!

Overall, I'm not a big fan of this story. I found it too messy when it comes to details and I found it really hard to finish off reading it!

my Goodreads review