If You Want to Make God Laugh - Book Review

Thanks to G.P. Putnam's Sons for the complimentary copy

 of If You Want to Make God Laugh.

The end of Apartheid. Nelson Mandela has been elected the president of South Africa. AIDS is becoming an epidemic.

Seventeen year old Zodwa lives in a squatter camp with her sick mother. Zodwa is expecting a baby she doesn't want and hiding a secret that could get her killed.

Dee is helping children in an orphanage in Zaire but when she gets word that Daniel is dying she return home to South Africa for the first time in over forty years.

Ruth stages her own suicide attempt to win back her husband but he is unmoved and she has no where else to go except home to the farm she hopes to sell. But her sister has returned and has no intention of selling the home she left as a teen to become a nun.

Binding them all together is a baby boy.

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I very much enjoyed Bianca Marsais's novel Hum If You Don't Know the Words that released in 2017 so I was thrilled to get the opportunity to read her newest novel If You Want to Make God Laugh. Besides the long titles, the books stand out with the colorful covers and call to me. They immediately draw me in with the South African settings and their rich characters.

If You Want to Make God Laugh captured my attention from the first page and the pacing of short chapters kept me turning the pages late into the night. The plot is emotional and thrilling but the characters, broken and determined, made me fall in love with the novel. I read with my heart in my throat as they struggled to make the best of the terrible situations. Each character was motivated by love and they felt deeply human.

It's a world without fairy tale endings, but If You Want to Make God Laugh offers hope. It is a journey of emotion--a beautiful book that tells a story I won't soon forget.

If You Want to Make God Laugh by Bianca Marais is published by G.P. Putnam's Sons and released on July 18, 2019.