Goodreads Monday is a weekly meme that was started by @Lauren’s Page Turners but is now currently being hosted by Emily @ Budget Tales Book Blog. This meme is quite easy to follow – just randomly pick a book from your to-be-read list and give the reasons why you want to read it. It is that simple.

This week’s book:

On A Night of A Thousand Stars by Andrea Yaryura Clark

Blurb from Goodreads

New York, 1998. Santiago Larrea, a wealthy Argentine diplomat, is holding court alongside his wife, Lila, and their daughter, Paloma, a college student, and budding jewelry designer, at their annual summer polo match and soiree. All seems perfect in the Larreas’ world—until an unexpected party guest from Santiago’s university days shakes his usually unflappable demeanor. The woman’s cryptic comments spark Paloma’s curiosity about her father’s past, of which she knows little.

When the family travels to Buenos Aires for Santiago’s UN ambassadorial appointment, Paloma is determined to learn more about his life in the years leading up to the military dictatorship of 1976. With the help of a local university student, Franco Bonetti, an activist member of H.I.J.O.S.—a group whose members are the children of the desaparecidos, or the “disappeared,” men and women who were forcibly disappeared by the state during Argentina’s “Dirty War”—Paloma unleashes a chain of events that not only leads her to question her family and her identity but also puts her life in danger.

In a compelling fashion, On a Night of a Thousand Stars speaks to relationships, morality, and identity during a brutal period in Argentinian history, and the understanding—and redemption—people crave in the face of tragedy.

Why I Want To Read It

Happy Monday everyone! Wow. I can’t believe that today is the last Monday of April. Thankfully, statutory tax season is finally done and over with. Congratulations fellow accountants and to auditors as well! Now back to normal operations. After a stretch of gloomy spells, the searing tropical heat has returned, to much annoyance. I thought summer was already over, but lo and behold, we’re back to square one. Nonetheless, I hope that you were able to meditate, rest, and recover during the weekend. Travel for leisure is starting to pick up here in the Philippines as COVID19 cases started to decline. But despite the decline in cases, I hope everyone is still observing minimum health protocols. Another surge will be a blow to our morale; we cannot afford to have another one. I just hope that the pandemic, with all its variants, will soon come to an end.

To kickstart the blogging week, I am posting a new Goodreads Monday update. In a couple of days, a new month is about to start, and with it, a new journey although for now, I don’t have any iota of what my May reading journey is going to look like. Perhaps a new Asian Literature month? It is still up in the air. Nevertheless, in the past two months, I have been featuring works by female writers. April has been an extension of my March Women’s History Month reading month. It was a productive and insightful journey, so far. I am currently reading Danya Kukafka’s Notes on an Execution, one of the books I have listed for my 2022 Books I Look Forward To List. Meanwhile, for this week’s Goodreads Monday update, I am featuring a book I recently added to my want-to-read list, Andrea Yaryura Clark’s On A Night of A Thousand Stars.

Both my current read and this week’s featured book share similarities. Both were written by writers whose works I have never read or encountered previously. Both books were also released this year. But while Notes on an Execution is Kukafka’s sophomore novel, On A Night of A Thousand Stars is Clark’s debut novel. The former is tagged as a work of mystery fiction while the latter, from what I surmise is a work of historical fiction. Historical fiction will always work for me.

One of the facets of Clark’s debut novel that piqued my interest was its exploration of contemporary Argentina history. As far as I can recall, I haven’t read any books focusing on Argentinian history. Actually and unfortunately, I haven’t read the works of any Argentinian writers yet although I have one I have recently acquired, José Mármol’s Amalia. I am also intrigued by the story of the desaparecidos and the Argentian “Dirty War”; I have read of the war in the works of Chilean writers. I do admit that I am a little apprehensive about the novel’s dual timeline. Most of the recent novels I have read that used the same literary device were undone by this facet. But I am willing to reserve my judgment until I read the book.

Just released last March, I hope to acquire a copy of the book so that I can delve into it immediately. How about you fellow reader? What book written by a female author are you looking forward to? I hope you could share it in the comment

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