Forbidden by Kimberley Griffiths Little

This book can be summed up in two words: Love Story. However, I loved the setting and the characters! It is set in the ancient Mesopotamian desert, and Little does a great job of painting the picture for the readers. Jayden is a 16-year-old girl who has been promised to the son of her tribe's chief, and the book opens at her betrothal ceremony. A large part of the betrothal is getting to dance with the other women in preparation for dancing for her husband on her wedding night. Jayden is nervous at first, but as she begins to dance she finally feels like she belongs, and she is nervous about her wedding, but she loves the dancing! However, the day after the betrothal ceremony, Jayden's mother goes into labor, and she delivers twin babies. One of the babies is stillborn, and Jayden's mother ends up dying from loss of blood. They have to bury her and the baby boy and move on to where the tribe will spend the summer months. Jayden remains at her mother's grave to dance and say goodbye to her, and when she finishes dancing she spots Kadesh, a member of a tribe from the far south. She instantly feels connected with Kadesh, and they fall in love quickly. However, the two of them have to deal with being separated when Kadesh returns home to his tribe, and also when Jayden's intended finds out about their relationship. They go through a lot of trials throughout the book, and at the end, Jayden is left alone thinking she will never get to be with Kadesh.
The book is the first in a trilogy, and it leaves you filled with hope because the author hints that Jayden and Kadesh will be reunited. Along the way, you meet other characters besides Jayden and Kadesh, and they aren't all likable. Jayden's older sister, Leila, struggles with her religious beliefs and what she wants from life, and at times, she doesn't seem to really support Jayden or their father. But, she does have redeeming qualities, and she helps Jayden at a time when I thought Jayden had lost everyone she loved. There are two characters I despised all throughout the book, and they were Horeb, Jayden's intended, and Dinah, a member of the tribe who leaves to live in the city and takes Jayden's infant sister with her after Jayden gives up all of her betrothal jewelry to convince her to save the baby. Horeb is very power hungry, and the way he treats Jayden is awful! I actually found myself wishing that he would be killed, but of course, since every story needs a villain, he is still there at the end of the book. Dinah is just a selfish woman in my eyes, and I got so angry with her that I was hoping she would die as well.
I plan on reading the next two books rather quickly, since they are published and the series is finished. I also want to learn more about Mesopotamia and Babylon after reading this book. Just a word of warning: there is sexual innuendo throughout the book. Horeb does not respect women, and there is attempted rape, but it is not described in great detail. This is a four star book on my Goodreads account because it's not the best I have read, but it is definitely one that I couldn't put down once I started.

The Whistler of Hutoriane by Jimmy Eaton

I first heard of this from my niece who teaches 4th grade at a school near me. She and I have loved to share books for years, and I am interested in what she shares with her students because I have a number of my own students who are at a lower reading level. However, I was not able to read this one for almost a year; mainly because I had other books that I felt were more interesting. Ha! Ha!

I am actually glad that I waited a while on this one because it was not a great book. It was only ok, and even then, I had a tough time finishing it. The story starts with Bean out on a hunting trip with his father, uncle, and cousin. The group is in the Uintah mountains in Utah, and they leave their campsite early in the morning to spot the bucks that Bean and his father had seen earlier. While they are waiting, Bean's dad decides to go one way and his uncle and cousin go another in the hopes of flushing the deer towards Bean. The three of them leave Bean alone, and he gets nervous. Eventually, he realizes that it has been much longer than his dad told him to wait, and he decides to try to locate his dad on his own. Bean leaves the meeting spot, and while he is searching for his dad, a mountain lion spots him and attacks him. Just as the mountain lion is grabbing Bean's leg, Bean is pulled into a dark cave and it seals shut behind him. Once he is in the cave, he meets a strange man named Draug who claims to be his great-great-great-great-great grandson. Draug tells Bean that he gave his grandson a special whistle, and it is the same whistle that Bean's father has given to him. He proceeds to tell Bean that his father is in trouble, and he needs Bean to travel to a woman named Ramona to give her a wooden ladle, and then she will help him locate his father. Bean is desperate and agrees to help. Draug uses some magic to transport Bean to the country of Venezuela where he meets various people who don't like him just because he is an American. He also meets Toni, a Venezuelan, who tells him he will help Bean to get to the silver disc because Toni needs the disc to save his people. Bean has no idea what Toni is talking about, but he agrees to travel with Toni because Toni saved his life. The two end up going to a remote village in a national park of Venezuela, and there Bean has to fight off skin walkers, and Ramona shares with him a visual map of where he has to go to become the leader of Hutoriane (the world we live in that includes different realms that we can't see). Bean trusts Ramona, but he ends up having to use his whistle to travel back to Draug a couple of times, and at the end, he realizes that maybe Draug wasn't as honest with him as he thought.

The story was definitely written for younger students, and I would say if you have a student in third or fourth grade (maybe fifth) he/she would enjoy it. However, there were a lot of things that reminded me of the culture of Utah, especially that of the Latter-Day Saints. The author served a service mission to the country of Venezuela, and he used that experience as part of the inspiration for his story. In addition, there were phrases in Spanish that he didn't always translate, and if you don't know Spanish at all then it would be super annoying to read it. The characters were not deeply developed, and I felt that Bean was a little too young to be so trusting, but to also be traveling through the country of Venezuela all by himself. The author described Bean as a blonde boy, and he had Bean use a ball cap to disguise himself while in Venezueala, which I found hilarious. There is no way that a baseball cap is going to help a blonde kid blend in with the people of Venezuela, especially when he has no knowledge of the country or the language that they speak. I was super annoyed that Bean was maybe at the most 12-years-old, and the author had him traveling through these weird portals and fighting off skin walkers. He even had Bean kill one of the skin walkers, which to me was just a little bazaar.

All in all, I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a well-developed plot or characters. It's probably great for kids who don't know what good writing is, but I hesitate to even share it with my lower readers. I just don't see an audience for this one, other than maybe the children and relatives of the author.