Return to the Little Coffee Shop of Kabul by Deborah Rodriguez

Return to the Little Coffee Shop of Kabul is a sequel to the book The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul which was an international best seller written by Deborah Rodriguez which I have not read.  However, I can now say I have read the sequel and I will be hunting out the original book over the summer to read.

My friend lent this to me to read after I had completed some very full on Master's level assignments and she knew I needed to escape to another reality.  Mission completed.

Here is the front cover and the blurb:

Apparently most of the characters from the original are back, except for one main exception, and there are some new characters introduced.

The book essentially centres around six women and girls in Afganistan and the United States.

Sunny is struggling to readjust to life back in the US after leaving her coffee shop behind in Kabul, the capital city of Afganistan.  Her life takes another dramatic twist in adjustment from losing her soulmate and then dealing with his affairs, taking her to the Screaming Peacock Vineyard, his dream property.  There Sunny meets a trio of men, Sky, Joe and Rick, who will take her life, and those of some of her friends, in new directions.

Yazmina is now runing the coffee shop in Kabul and is bamboozled by her mother-in-law's absences with her young daughter.  Halajan and Yazmina's daughter Najama are having adventures all over Kabul, some that would be frowned upon by her son and the wider community.  Meanwhile her son and Yazmina's husband, Ahmet, is opening up his mind to new possibilities for Afganistan at the university while also looking forward to the birth of their first child together.

Yazmima's younger sister Layla has gone to the US to learn English and is unhappy.  She is brought to the Screaming Peacock Vineyard by Candace for Sunny to look after.  Sunny employs Kat, a girl who had immigrated to the US with her mother as a child, to teach Layla English.  This is confronting to Kat, who, for dramatic reasons, has been trying to leave her Afgani past far behind her.

Then there is Zara, who is in love with Omar, a friend of Ahmet's, but her family has been asked to consent to Zara's hand in marriage with a powerful man who will not take no for an answer.  This will have a devasting affect on Zara's family and the future of Yazmina's family too.

While I have labelled this book as chick lit for the post, it is not a simpering love story that plays for laughs or soppiness.  It is a book more aimed at women than men, but it brings up some challenging themes such as how do you carry on when you lose the one you love the most, arranged marriages, the conflict of cultures, and day-to-day life in what is pretty much still a war zone.

I enjoyed the book and will definitely be searching out the first one to read so that I understand how these characters got to where they are now.