Blog Tour Review: Guns and Almond Milk by Mustafa Marwan

Hey everyone!
Today is my stop on the ultimate blog tour for Guns and Almond Milk by Mustafa Marwan, and I am excited to be sharing my review with you all.

A massive thank you to @The_WriteReads and @InterlinkBooks for allowing me to be a part of the tour.

Title: Guns and Almond Milk
Author: Mustafa Marwan
Publisher: Interlink Books
Release Date: 2nd April 2024
Page Count: 234
Genre: War
Age: Adult
Buy It Here: Amazon UK

Book Blurb:

Meet Luke Archer, a British Egyptian doctor who struggles to be from two worlds at the same time. He’s working in one of the world’s most dangerous hospitals in Yemen. When rebel forces take over the city, a group of Western mercenaries take refuge inside the hospital and Luke and his team find themselves in the middle of a deadly clash. To make matters worse, leading the mercenaries is an unwelcome figure from Luke’s past. After years saving the lives of others, Luke needs to face the demons of his past in order to save his own.

Set in the UK and Yemen, Guns and Almond Milk is a literary thriller that deals with identity, diversity and old coins of arguable value. It’s The Sympathizer mixed with M.A.S.H by the way of Ramy.

My Review:

With a title like Guns and Almond Milk, I really wondered what I was heading in to, but I was certainly intrigued. The story begins with a bang, and from the very beginning, I knew that this book was going to suck me in and never let me go.

Luke and his fellow aid workers were having a difficult enough time as it was, with limited supplies and too many patients, but when the mercenaries take refuge in the hospital and basically take over, none of them could even begin to imagine what they were in for next.

There were some very interesting characters in the story, and they were a real mixed bunch. Luke himself was an extremely complex character, with many layers, and a backstory that really gripped you. His backstory flows alongside the present day within the story seamlessly, and explains a lot of what is happening with him personally in the present day. I loved how the author drip fed the information throughout the book.

The brutality of war is on almost every page of the story, and is at times difficult to read, but it all adds to the feel and authenticity of the book. The violence ramps up to an explosive climax that has you on the edge of your seat. There’s a lot to take in and get your head around in those last couple of chapters, which lead to an ending that has you reeling.

This book is chaos from start to finish. It is intense, fast-paced, and has a raw honesty to the reality of war that people usually shy away from. This book will have you thinking for a long time after finishing.

I give Guns and Almond Milk a 4.5 star rating!

About The Author:

“I am an Egyptian writer, aid worker and trainer.

I have over a decade of humanitarian experience in more than a dozen conflict zones around the world—including most Arab Spring countries at the heights, and lows, of their uprisings.

My Page Turner Award finalist debut, Guns and Almond Milk, is coming out 20 Feb 2024 from Interlink and distributed by Simon & Schuster.

I like neo-noir, dark humour and books that strike the magical balance between the literary and the commercial.”

YOU CAN FIND MUSTAFA HERE:
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