Ready to discover another great book for this 2023? Take a look…

Dirt by Sarah Sultoon

Genre: Thriller
Publisher:  Orenda Books
Source: Random Things Tours
Rating: 5/5
Amazon, Waterstones, Hive

About The Book

This is no utopia…

1996. Northern Israel. Lola leaves an unhappy home life in England for the fabled utopian life of a kibbutz, but this heavily guarded farming community on the Arab-Israeli border isn’t the idyll it seems, and tensions are festering.
Hundreds of miles away, in the Jerusalem offices of the International Tribune newspaper, all eyes are on Israel’s response to a spate of rocket attacks from Lebanon, until cub reporter Jonny Murphy gets a tip from a mysterious source that sends him straight into the danger zone.
When the body of an Arab worker is discovered in the dirt of the kibbutz chicken house, it triggers a series of events that puts Lola and the whole community in jeopardy, and Jonny begins to uncover a series of secrets that put everything at risk, as he begins to realise just how far some people will go to belong…

---

My Thoughts

Some books are written to make you disconnect, some others to make you search and learn a little bit more about human history. “Dirt” is part of the second type, a book that will not leave anyone indifferent, it will make you be interested on the real story on the Arab-Israeli border, what part of the book is true and what part is fiction is for you to decide.
This is a very interesting story to read; it was a little bit tricky at the beginning to know what was really happening, but once you start getting into it, it’s quite impossible not wanting to know more. Who is the killer and why did they kill them? Does it have anything to do with the rocket attacks?
The story is told between two different perspectives; Jonny Murphy, a journalist from the International Tribune newspaper, who goes to the border between Lebanon and Israel to investigate a murder. And the other characters are the people living on the border, the kibbutz community, where the victim has been living and where nothing is what it seems.
This is a mystery, there’s been a murder and someone needs to know why this happened, but the core of the story is much darker and twisted, nothing is what it seems in this book. One surprise after another, this book kept me awake all night.
I have to say that after reading the book I search for some historical facts about the history of the story; which part is true, which part is fiction. The author, Sarah Sultoon, did an amazing job with the research, you can’t know the difference while you are reading it.
Racism, rape, abandonment are some of the difficult themes that are part of this book story; not easy but it puts the reader in the difficult position to know what’s fair and what’s not.
This is a mystery, there’s been a killer and someone needs to know why this happened, but the core of the story is much darker and twisted, nothing is what it seems in this book. One surprise after another, this book kept me awake all night.
So, are you ready to get the “Dirt”?

---

About The Author

Sarah Sultoon is a journalist and writer, whose work as an international news executive at CNN has taken her all over the world, from the seats of power in both Westminster and Washington to the frontlines of Iraq and Afghanistan. She has extensive experience in conflict zones, winning three Peabody awards for her work on the war in Syria, an Emmy for her contribution to the coverage of Europe’s migrant crisis in 2015, and a number of Royal Television Society gongs. As passionate about fiction as nonfiction, she recently completed a Masters of Studies in Creative Writing at the University of Cambridge, adding to an undergraduate language degree in French and Spanish, and Masters of Philosophy in History, Film and Television. When not reading or writing she can usually be found somewhere outside, either running, swimming or throwing a ball for her three children and dog while she imagines what might happen if…

---