A St. Martin's Press ARC via NetGalley.
Many thanks to the author and publisher.

This book is incredible. You can tell that the author spent time researching and painted a vivid Picture in the Sand. Every chapter you want to keep finding out about Ali and Alex. I highly recommend reading this and I feel sorry for the next books of this year that have to follow this one.

My only problem is that if you are listening to this with headphones in, the narrators breathing in the microphone is unbearable...I couldn't listen to it....

21st-century, correspondence, Egypt, email, family, family-drama, family-dynamics, famous-persons, fiction, film-industry, historical-figures, historical-novel, historical-places-events, historical-research, imprisoned, read, relationships, relatives, religious-cultism, religious-differences, torture,*****

A meaningful blending of fictional memoir and history stressing the love of family and lasting results of decisions made in one's youth in any timeframe. The lessons of similarities between cultures/presumed enemies are invaluable. The storytellers (aside from the author) are grandfather and grandson who made similar decisions and narrated by talented voice actor Sean Rohani.
A wonderful story!
I requested and received a free temporary audio copy from Dreamscape Media via NetGalley. Thank you!

Picture in The Sand is a good page-turner. It is part suspense and part drama.

It does a few things well. It not only takes you to the set of the Ten Commandments production (a big chunk of the book focuses on around the filming of the movie and shortly after) and shows you this fictional set, it also transforms you to 1950's Egypt. The author's attention to detail with the setting of this story is apparent. 

The author, stealthily, educates you about the country's complicated political history. I very much appreciated it. The author (a former journalist) clearly did his research well. 

Now the drama in the book became too much at parts and I could have done without the torture scenes in the prison. So just know it gets graphic in a couple of scenes but they are skippable. 

I initially had a tiny issue with the story with mostly Muslim characters being written by a non-Muslim, non-Middle Eastern author. But as I read it I didn't find anything overtly wrong or distasteful with the way these characters were portrayed.

My only gripe with the narrator was that when he was voicing some of the characters like cousin Sherif and Professor Farid his voice took a different but cartoon-ish tone. i appreciated him sounding out the Arabic words correctly though.

I absolutely intrigued when I requested this book an I loved it the characters in the book were really good relationship Dynamics not just the grandpa but all over them them pace of the book was on the slow side at times and fast pace in others I hope everyone reads this

Thank you NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for accepting my request to audibly read and review Picture in the Sand.

Author: Peter Blauner
Narrator: Sean Rohani
Published: 01/05/23
Genre: Mystery & Thrillers

Right away, reading the first chapter I knew this was not for me. By the end of the third chapter I contemplated not finishing it. My question: Is there a line between finishing a book you have agreed to review and knowing you don't like the book and finishing it?

The narration was okay.

I think it's a writing style, its dry and simple, and I just cannot get into the story. There is communication between a grandson and grandfather that drove me batty.

The genre classification, the beautiful cover, and the blurb regarding storytelling appealed to me. Unfortunately, this was a miss. Maybe it was written for you.

This sweeping tale blew me away! Written in simple statements in letters from Grandfather to grandson, it tells a story full of intruige, corruption, zealotry, and, oddly enough, movies.

Predominantly set in Egypt of the 1950s, the lengths a man will go to for love and freedom tell a story that directly bears on the state of warfare and zealotry today.

Too, the narrator helped the characters jump off the page, doing a good job of conveying emotion without taking away from thw story or words being spoken.

A stunning piece written with a storytellers voice, run don't walk to this book!

My thanks to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Many thanks to NetGalley, St Martin's Press/Minotaur Books and Dreamscape Media for gifting me both a digital and audio ARC of this beautifully-written book by Peter Blauner and wonderfully narrated by Sean Rohani - 5 stars!

In the form of letters written to his grandson, Alex, Ali Hassan tells Alex about his own past, hoping to persuade Alex to come home. Alex had been accepted to an Ivy League university when he left home and refused contact with his parents, instead taking up with a radical Muslim group fighting what they consider to be a holy war in the Middle East. Ali tells Alex about his time as a young man in Egypt with his eyes on a movie career in Hollywood. When Cecil B. DeMille comes to make The Ten Commandments, Ali gets a job as an assistant. However, he unwittingly gets involved in political unrest, threatening his and his family's lives.

This was such a fascinating read - Ali's letters tell of a time of political turmoil and how easy it is to be persuaded to do the wrong things, while we alternately read Alex's letters to his grandpa showing him following a similar destructive path. As one who always watched The Ten Commandments on Easter, I enjoyed reading about the making of the film and the portrayal of the actors and director. All of these characters in this book are so well developed; I felt so much for them. I also loved the relationship between Ali and Alex, a connection so different from a parental one. Ali was desperate to get Alex to learn from his mistakes, but did it in a way that let Alex find his own way back. Highly recommended - a blockbuster of a story!

I really loved Picture in the Sand, told as messages between a grandfather and his radicalized grandson. I enjoyed the grandfather's history a lot, as being a worker on the Ten Commandments film. I got a great sense of place and the writing swept me away.