A review by sunshineariel
The Shiksa Syndrome by Laurie Graff

2.0

It is rare, but sometimes I find myself reading a book so poorly written that I cannot bring myself to finish it. This is one of those books. The plot was decent enough to keep me interested for about half the book, but the author's writing kept me from wanting to finish it. Her sentence structure is very odd, and alternates between rambling sentences and sentences that seem to be missing some elements. In many places the scene completely changes between one paragraph and the next, with no transition and no separation. I was 142 pages in when the main character used a strong swear word, completely out of the blue. It wasn't the word that shocked me but the fact that there had been no indication for the first 141 pages that this word would be something natural for the character to say or think. While it is a story of the search for love and the hijix that go along with a mistaken identity, it seems the author also wanted this book to make the reader think about religion and tolerance, but the way she went about it made it seem like you are taking a break from the story to hear her opinions on those subjects. It isn't integrated very well with the story.
The only reason I gave this two stars instead of one is that it is an interesting plot, and the poor writing did not significantly detract from the story until about halfway through. I did flip to the end and read the last chapter, to see that it has a happy ending.