Home Now: How 6000 Refugees Transformed an American Town by Cynthia Anderson

I made it to about 60% of the book before I started skimming. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with HOME NOW, which is a journalistic piece about a town in Maine called Lewiston, which ended up changing dramatically after they received an influx of Somalian refugees. Now they are one of the top 5 Muslim cities in the country. This book is all about how that has changed the politics and diversity of the city, and what it means under Trump.

As I said, there's nothing wrong with the topic. I grabbed this title because it's by PublicAffairs, which has become one of my favorite publishers of nonfiction. Their writers take interesting and unique topics and talk about them in a really engaging and informative way. My problem with this book is that it basically feels like a padded-out Vanity Fair article, and could have been summed up in three pages as opposed to 300.

I was really engaged in the beginning, but the book quickly started to feel repetitive and cyclical. I don't think there was enough subject matter to carry the book.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review!  

2 out of 5 stars