Desiring Cairo [Paperback]

I read and enjoyed Baby Love, and wasn't sure how it could be continued, but in fact there was much more depth in Desiring Cairo, following up the same themes but really doing them justice, while being funny and exciting too, just as Baby Love was. Angeline falls in love, and a lot of the book is set in Egypt, not just as a backdrop but as a real country. It said in the Sunday Times that this book was 'exhilarating and genuinely serious' - I couldn't see how a sequel to Baby Love could be serious at all but it is. I recommend it a lot. There's going to be a part three as well, so there's that to look forward to.

I read a review of desiring cairo in which they said Louisa Young's talent lay in creating sexy believable but fundamentally decent men. Having read the whole of her trilogy I agree. Evangeline is a great stroppy heroine with none of the mushy self-dobut which ruins so many 'chick books' as for her heroes. Sa'id is great as the unobtainable dream but it is Harry who sticks in the mind - louche, laidback and believable - I have to say I grew up in Shepherd's Bush and Acton and god I would have died for a man like him. Anyway read this for a good laugh, a great read and some occasionally serious fun.

'Desiring Cairo' is the first sequel to Louise Young's 'Baby Love' (see earlier review) and follows the further adventures of Evangeline Gower, ex-belly dancer, writer, single mum (of her dead sister's daughter) and lover of all things Egyptian. Evangeline's hard-won peace at the end of 'Baby Love' is shattered when Hakim, a handsome Egyptian boy who she knew during her time living in Cairo ten years previously, arrives on her doorstep in search of his mother. Evangeline sets to work helping him - but things get ever more complicated, particularly when Hakim's even more handsome older brother, Said, turns up to find his brother. Meanwhile, Evangeline also has to deal with her ex-boyfriend Harry, with her ex-stalker Eddie Bates's alcoholic wife, decide whether she wants to find out who Lily's father was, and top up her freelance income - and she is also being troubled by aspects of her past. And when she and Said become lovers, and she heads off to Cairo with him, there are several not-so-nice surprises waiting for her there... To say more would spoil the plot, but safe to say, there are innumerable complications, some of which, but only some, are resolved by the end of the novel (Young had to keep some surprises for the final book in the trilogy). As with 'Baby Love', the novel is a pleasant, sometimes quite gripping read. The conversations between Angeline and Lily can get a bit over-sickly at times, but on the whole the dialogue is quite believable, and the descriptions of Egypt, and of Egyptian myths and Middle-Eastern culture, are stunning. I stop at three stars because I didn't really find the plot convincing: I couldn't believe in the love affair between Angeline and Said, which seemed to happen way too fast, and felt that Hakim and Said's English mother Sarah was underdeveloped as a character. And, after a slow start, the plot suddenly got very melodramatic in the Egypt scenes, when Evangeline's nasty surprises started. And again, Evangeline seemed to keep her cool in the direst situations.

Not great literature, but a good switch-off read. On balance, though, I have to say that I much preferred Young's 'My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You' to this Cairo trilogy.