Little Bee - Chris Cleave

"If your face is swollen from the severe beatings of life, smile and pretend to be a fat man."

'Never judge a book by its cover' certainly applies here, but not for the usual reasons. 

I think I would have enjoyed this book more had it not been for the ridiculous number of compliments plastered across its cover and its inside few pages. It was these exact comments that caused me to read it in the first place, but I felt as though the book didn't quite live up to the hype. 

Little Bee is a Nigerian refugee. A chance encounter with a white couple on the beach leads to something terrible. Two years later Little Bee finds herself in the UK and, with not a friend in the world, she seeks out the white couple. Bound together by awful events, they find their adventure together is not yet over. 

The back of the book implies that something absolutely shockingly terrible happens between the book's main protagonists on the beach that day. What happens is indeed horrendous, but my mind conjured up much worse beforehand. I felt as though the reviews on the front and the Editors letter set the book up to fail. There was no way this book could live up to its own hype. I think I would have been much more impressed by it if I had been left to discover its genius on my own, instead of being promised something unrealistic. 

That being said, I read the book in one day on holiday. It is certainly a page turner. Cleaves has a talent for luring his reader into a false sense of security and then stabbing them in the eye with something unbelievable all of a sudden. It leaves you feeling quite offended. Unfortunately, he doesn't inject this talent into his ending. I felt let down on the last page. I wanted a definitive ending. This book didn't give me that.

I gave it three stars because it made me feel ashamed. If it weren't for that I would have given it less I think. Little Bee is so incredibly naive and lovely that she totally forgives the people of our country even though our needs are the very reason her life is falling apart. She is unbelieving of the luxuries of England, concerned always with being attacked, and is well aware that she is unwanted on our shores. I know that I will think before I complain about anything in my life in the near future because of Chris Cleaves' 'Little Bee'. There is something very special about writing that can invoke this type of reaction. A reaction that might hopefully be beneficial to someone else one day.

Recommended, but don't hold it hostage to the reviews on the front.