Margarita Wednesdays by Deborah Rodriguez

Maybe if I had read the author's first book I would have been more charmed by this one.  Certainly the author was genuine and had done some off the beaten path type of things with her life.  But I just couldn't find a connection or really appreciate the story she had to tell.

Having lived in Afghanistan and then leave abruptly when her son is threatened with kidnapping, Rodriguez finds herself back in the states struggling to make sense of what happened.  She stays for awhile with a friend turned a little more until he decides he's had enough of the relationship.  And then it's off to Mazatlan Mexico where she buys a little house and settles down to try to pull the pieces of her life together.  Here she makes new friends but still feels as if something is missing, and with personal problems, family problems, and other problems, peace sometimes seems unobtainable.

Rodriguez can be pretty blunt about herself at times.  Especially when it comes to her choices in men.  She is very frank about all her mistakes there.  And her two sons, while seemingly important to her, actually feature very little in her life.  Yes, one comes and lives with her, but that's when she starts describing him in detail and showing a sense of caring.  She has a lot of drama.  And it gets tiring.  You want to just shake her and say why do you keep doing this to your life?  The other characters she describes nicely though and she usually has something nice to say about almost all of them.

This book is drama.  It's disguised by the fact that it's about moving to Mexico and becoming part of the community there.  But really it's about Rodriguez's personal struggles and how she tries to overcome them.  Mexican culture is a second, although through her interactions with her son's married family help bring the culture to the reader.  She also mentions her first book a lot and that gets a little tiring.   After about the fifth mention, it's like, "ok, you have a book about the beauty school you started in Afghanistan.  That's fantastic, and wonderful for those women, but you've told me this before."  It's obvious she's very proud of it, but redundant after awhile.

This is an ok memoir.  A little too much drama for me and not enough description of everything else.  I'm sure those who read the first book though will find it much more absorbing.

**This book was won in a Goodreads Giveaway**

Margarita Wednesdays
Copyright 2014
276 pages