I was given an advanced reader’s copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book is, well, different. There is a great narrative in here about the Boston Ethiopian community, which was interesting, as well as the story of a teenage girl with an emotionally unavailable father who gets with an older guy who’s not so good for her. These stories alone are well written and make the book well worth reading. The twist that people have mentioned in negative reviews, the exodus to the cult island, is not as enjoyable or believable but doesn’t take but so much away from the rest of the novel. Different in a good way.

Despite an intriguing premise, I struggled to get through this book. It started off interestingingly, a girl and her father in a mysterious community on an unnamed remote island--but the book quickly switched to backstory where a teenage Ethiopian girl becomes enamored,even obsessesed, with a charismatic parking lot attendant and the book becomes all about him. The author knows how to put words together nicely, but there was a whole lot more "telling" than "showing" in this story and I never got attached to the characters enough to care about them or their story and I never really saw the reason for the obsession with the parking lot attendant.

Unfortunately this book was not something that interested me and I decided to move on to something else & did not finish it

A fifteen-year-old girl and her father are living on an island somewhere off the coast of East Africa in an isolated colony of other Ethiopians who have little to eat, not much to do (although a few of them work in the larger society outside this strange group, and supply the few items that are needed to support them). How they got there and what drives these people to live this way is the flashback that provides the story.
The father and daughter previously had lived in Boston, Massachusetts where the girl had grown up in an Ethiopian-American community. She had come under the spell of a scruffy-looking parking lot attendant, Ayale, who seemed to have a great many people working for him in mysterious ways. The girl, who is not named, goes to the parking lot every day after school and does her homework in the small office where Ayale manages his lot workers. Long before the girl becomes one of Ayale's couriers herself, she becomes suspicious of what is going on and what Ayale is up to, but she can't figure it out. People are surreptitiously watching her apartment and following her movements. She and her father are becoming afraid, especially when the murders of seemingly random and unconnected Ethiopians take place, and the police bring both her and Ayale in for questioning. What is going on?
Author Nafkote Tamirat has woven an interesting, suspensful, and intricate tale that will be sure to keep the reader entranced until the mystery of the colony on the island is solved.

<i>The Parking Lot Attendant</i> by Nafkote Tamirat was captivating from page one. We're introduced to our narrator whose story begins on an undisclosed island where it's clear she and her father might be outcasts of sorts. This unnamed island has become home to the narrator and her father along with other Ethiopians that believed in Ayale.

Our narrator recounts the events that led to her being on this island that was to serve as a sort of Utopia for herself and the current residents but they all soon find that life isn't as easy as their deliverer, Ayale, would have them believe.

At the heart of the story we're being taken on a coming-of-age journey of a young girl who was once abandoned by her father only to have him return and then abandoned by her mother. Her father raises her almost at a distance. Neither are ever really close. There are few daddy and daughter moments. It is perhaps this distance relationship that drives her to fall madly for Ayale. He is close in age to her father but he's so different than he.

Ayale is described as a born leader and is quite complicated. The narrator describes him in the most glowing of lights even as she sees that all that glimmers isn't gold. Before long a series of murders strikes this Boston based Ethiopian community that forces our heroine to see Ayale different. But not before he's already taught her to see the world different.

Nafkote Tamirat writes an engaging coming of age story that has offers a compelling voice. There was something about the way the story flows and the narrators voice that enticed me to read further. Yes, the story was interesting but I felt more entranced with the narrator. It's obvious that she's looking for something and is hopeful to have found it but can't quite obtain it.

I definitely would recommend this novel to friends. I think it's an interesting journey of finding ones self that readers will want to see all the way through. Tamirat has peaked my interest. I'll certainly be looking foward to more from this author.

<i>Copy provided by Henry Holt & Company via Netgalley</i>

Rarely have I felt so wishy washy about a book. The blurb was intriguing and I was anxious to read the novel that began with an unnamed narrator and her father living on some island with the setting then switching to Boston. The second chapter provides information about the living situation of the narrator and her father and the third chapter focuses on the parking lot attendant. Unfortunately, the story fell short at this point. As the narrator is shown to be a young Ethiopian woman drawn to the older parking lot attendant, there is some mystery, but there was confusion as well as the author seems to be tackling two divergent stories. Sorry, but this just didn't work for me.

I did not see that ending coming! The plot twists and turn were superbly done and the falling action and resolution, BRAVO! I would have never thought that Ayale would turn out to be such a conniving snake. My goodness!

The tragedy that is Ethiopia is unimaginable to an outsider. Gone are the Rasta days of Emperor Haile Selassie when Ethiopia was going to show the way for all of Africa. Endless inter-tribal war has left death and destruction. Gangs rule, families are destroyed. Most of the world only pays brief, passing attention when especially horrible famine or savage warring with Eritrea gets a moment on the nightly news. A once beautiful country with a sophisticated history and culture lays in ruins

The lucky ones are able to use their life savings and connections to flee the chaos. They arrive in South Asia, Western Europe or the US with little more than the clothes on their back. They seek out others from the diaspora. They are able to find the work that earlier immigrants no longer are willing to do. Oftentimes that work leads to illegal activities and violence.

This is the story that Nafkote Tamirat tells in her debut novel “The Parking Lot Attendant”. The father of the unnamed narrator is the “apple of his mother’s eye”. He is sent to live with a relative in Massachusetts, eventually ending up in Boston. It is soon apparent that he is not equipped to do what needs to be done to survive. He does father a child and, after a fashion, is her caretaker during her most formative years.
Ayale, a far more savvy and sophisticated immigrant, is there to fill the void, for better and, most often, for worse. Ayale is the King of the Ethiopian ex-pat community from his post as a parking lot attendant in downtown Boston. Our narrator comes of age, but it comes at a cost.

By turns sad, witty, and terrifying, “The Parking Lot Attendant” has an important story to tell in these days of disquiet and uncertainty for so many.

Thank you NetGalley and Henry Holt for the ARC.

I didn’t quite know if this would be the book for me but I figured I would give it a try, but I couldn’t get in to it.

Interesting read though a confusing one. I never understood the unnamed girl's fate and thinking back on it now a few weeks later it still doesn't make sense to me. I couldn't suspend belief as much as I think I needed to here.

Too complicated for me right now. While the synopsis doesn't indicate that it's light reading, I just found myself unwilling to sift through the characters and conversations in order to finish.

This novel follows a young woman's coming of age in the Ethiopian community in Boston. The novel has a slow start which is a bit confusing, but the plot reveals itself soon enough. A book with some good character building and insight to a community that I was unfamiliar with.

I enjoyed the book....it was engaging & interesting.....but I wouldn't call it an overly 'easy' book to read, as it seemed like there were often a lot of 'open' conversations going on ...that I had to go back & review to reorient myself. There was also a political scheme that I didn't fully get? As a format, it kind of opens at the end, & then goes on to tell the story of how they got to that point......& that does end up working fine for the reader, offering a different sort of 'presentation.' It is a shorter book, & that is a positive aspect. I enjoyed reading something a bit different, in reading this book.
I do disclose that I was awarded this e-galley from NetGalley, in return for my own fair/honest review. All opinions are my own.

The writing here was a bit jumbled in the beginning, but cleared up quickly. Overall the story was presented well and was an interesting read. I feel it lost steam 2/3 of the way through but delivered a startling ending.

The hold Ayale had on the main character is both relatable and chillingly at times. Reading from this perspective about the plight of Ethiopian immigrants in New England was alarming. Growing up near D.C. the Ethiopian community was larger with less details in the web.

The beginning of this book finds the main character on a nameless island 600 miles from the nearest land. Stranded with her father among what seems to be some kind of cult (initially) the story works itself backwards to tell the reader how these characters have arrived on the island and why.