What happens when an elite African safari is transformed into a psychotic journey of survival for a society wife traveling with her narcissistic husband? In Mad Mischief, the shimmering beauty and primal power of Sub-Saharan Africa is the setting for this story of love, deceit, obsession and ultimately, escape and redemption. Inspired by true events, Mad Mischief is the haunting tale of Sarah – a … of Sarah – a woman struggling with the unforgiving callousness of her selfish husband, the sadistic machinations of their safari guide, the unscrupulous actions of a Nairobi shopkeeper, and the enigmatic behavior of a world-renowned photographer who inexplicably appears whenever she is in desperate need of a guardian angel. Her very consciousness altered by an adverse reaction to anti-malarial medication, Sarah barely maintains a vestige of her sanity and personal fortune as she travels through the game parks of Kenya and Tanzania, finally winding up in the city of Nairobi, where she confronts roguish men aiming to take advantage of her drug-induced state of mind.
The word safari means ‘long journey.’ The events of Sarah’s safari take her on a life-altering rite of passage that begins with an epiphany as she glimpses a matriarchal herd of elephants on her first day in the wild. From that moment on, her life and sanity slip away until she is rescued, and ultimately emerges with a transformed state of mind and a once unimaginable core of strength.
Susan spent nearly 20 years as Vice President of Sales for a major division of MCA/ Universal Studios, implementing sales programs to increase the attendance for The Universal Studios Tour, The Amphitheatre, the Tourmobile in Washington, D.C., and the hotel concessions at Yosemite National Park. She then went on to create two very successful entrepreneurial ventures, one delivering unique financial services to high-level executives, and the other providing innovative networking and marketing opportunities for a broad cross-section of businesses. She now resides in Montecito, California amidst an eclectic art collection gathered from her travels around the world, with a kitchen full of pots and pans for cooking gourmet dishes. Her passion for culinary masterpieces and wondrous art are very much a reflection of what she has poured into this work of fiction.
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I wanted to slap Sarah’s husband and Max, the tour guide, on several occasions, and then Sarah for putting up with them.
Going on an African safari sounds like tons of fun, right?
Well, except that Sarah’s husband and the tour guide were first class jerks.
The first order of business when the safari ends; tell the husband you’re not going home with him. Yay, Sarah! Let the fun begin!
Sarah, now left to her own devices with unlimited resources, goes into full-on maniac mode. She exhausted me changing hotels. On top of that, she is sick with a cough that won’t go away, and the leeches start coming out of the woodwork. Everyone has their hand out.
An interesting read being inside the head of someone with a bipolar disorder. Oddly, a lot of the stuff she did seemed perfectly sane.
When I read the blurb for Mad Mischief, I was intrigued. I have read very few books that take place in Africa. I have read even fewer books that take place on a photography safari. Since I am an easy-going reader, I figured I would enjoy reading it. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. I had to struggle to finish the book.
I did think that the storyline of Mad Mischief was interesting. A woman nearing the end of her rope goes on a safari with her husband and another couple. While on safari, the woman is abused and taken advantage of by the safari guide and husband. Almost suffering a breakdown, the woman soon realizes that she was stronger than she expected.
As I said, I liked the storyline. I thought it was well written and intriguing. The only thing, I didn’t like how the author jumped from past to present and back. I ended up rereading parts of paragraphs, which annoyed me because it broke my reading flow. I hate backtracking to previous chapters.
I felt terrible for Sarah the entire book. Max and her husband bullied her during her trip. She was taken advantage of by many people while in Nairobi. Not one person stepped in to help her, which saddened me. It was clear that she was losing her mind, and people kept using her. Even if she wasn’t my favorite character, I did feel for her.
Mad Mischief had to be one of the angriest books that I have read. Everyone was upset, and Sarah took the brunt of it. I couldn’t get over how everyone treated her. She was their verbal punching bag. It made me sick to read.
The end of Mad Mischief was confusing. It felt forced and rushed. I was left wondering what the heck happened. I was happy with what happened to Sarah, but it came out of left field.
Mad Mischief is not a book that I would read again. I thought that the storyline had promise. But that was overshadowed by unlikeable characters and a plotline that was hard to follow. Also, the anger towards Sarah in was hard to read.
A must read. Read the blurb and then the story. This story is intense dramatic, emotional, suspenseful, learning and so much more. It is one you have to read to get the full effect of it. One you can’t put down. I absolutely loved it. A woman on a journey with a narcissistic husband and savage guide and so much more. Something that causes anxiety, intense emotional situations and much more. This is her journey of life at this time. I received a review copy and voluntarily review it.
I think Mad Mischief by Susan St. John is a well written and interesting novel for a comparatively small group of readers. I read it to the end but personally found it boring. Which is not to say not good (double negatives attract attention with their annoyance). This is a travel book, think Safari Adventure. The descriptions are detailed and expressed with beautiful language. And this is what bores me. I don’t want to read the travel adventures of others, I want to experience them myself. Which is why I am an expat; I love to travel and I do it. Despite that, this is a travel novel of Africa, a continent I have not visited so there is a lot of new and interesting information. It is buried in the wealth of descriptive detail.
This is a character-driven story which provides an excuse for all the traveling. The story, about the shifting development of characters as they proceed on African travel adventures, is not remarkable and as I skimmed through a lot of the wonderful description to find the story (my apologies to the author) ennui quickly set in. This took me almost three days to read; it should have taken one.
There are no good or perfect characters in the story. Protagonist Sarah, the best of all the principal characters, seems mostly to be dealing with different states of mental confusion as she tries to define herself. She embarks on the safari with the good self-knowledge that she is not in the place she wants to be, she hopes the safari adventure will clear things up for her. Peter is her despicable husband, has no redeeming qualities, and is a definition of a wasted life. Sarah and he had met more than a decade in the past when she was some type of assistant to Peter. She didn’t really “graduate” when she married him. She may have thought she loved him. Peter knew he loved her money; she seems to have unlimited wealth. By the time of this safari, Sarah knows that she has never been and will never be more than his assistant. The degradation and disdain he subjected her to in this story are painful to read.
Max is only a shade less horrible and despicable character than Peter. Max is the safari guide and will take them on safari through at least two countries ending up in Kenya where most significant activities take place. Because of a Ph.D. and Masters backed up by eclectic education and experience in Photography and Flying, he is a know-it-all, which might be considered good in a guide. Max must be constantly better than anyone else. One way he does this is by deprecating the likes and activities of others. He is harsher than Peter in his criticism of all Sarah’s daily practices on safari, especially focusing on her desire to and insistence on keeping a written journal. Max believes the journal writing that Sarah does constantly is a waste of time; it distracts her attention from him. Sarah is both cataloging their journey with the what, why, and when of what they have seen as well as trying to do interpretive writing as she meditates.
There are three parts to Sarah’s safari experience. The first part involves Max, Peter, Sarah, Julia, and Thad. The latter two will terminate their part of the safari early but while they are on the trip Julia will bond with Sarah and commiserate about the terrible way Max treats Sarah while Peter looks on and seems to support Max. By the time the two leave and the three main characters proceed to Nairobi, Sarah will have begun to claim an identity of self-worth.
The second part of the story begins when Sarah tells Peter to go home; she will stay on in Nairobi. This second part is more interesting than the first because finally, we stop with detailed flora and fauna notes. Sarah, now alone, turns to observe people and society around her. Max is still around; she and Max have both been detained for overstaying their visa. For Max, this is a big deal. Authorities know he should have known better. By this time, Sarah is either mildly infatuated with or has a strong sense of loyalty to fellow travelers in distress. Max will remain detained while an investigation proceeds; Sarah will be released but hangs around to help Max get out of his mess. During the next several months she will get sick and be unable to travel while at the same time become a target for several scam artists who will attempt to borrow money from the unbelievably wealthy Sarah. She will become completely infatuated with Africa, specifically Kenya and will trust most who ask for money while she comes up with an idea for establishing an NGO that will fund poor Africans who otherwise would have no source of funds.
Sarah’s family in the US have become concerned with her ever-increasing expenditures and eventually, a delegation containing Sarah’s brother and a friend will arrive to find out what is going on. The story does not end here but is the beginning of the third phase of her journey, the one I found to be the most interesting.
There is a lot of content to this story. There is a story of government corruption that is handled well in its many facets. There is a story of African city life and its contrast to African village life. Throughout the novel there is the story of someone from a Western culture trying to understand and even be a part of African culture. As an expatriate living in Southeast Asia, I was entertained about the similarities in systems of corruption, bribery, and gifts. I gave this story four Amazon stars despite the fact I didn’t really like it. It is a 456-page well-written book for sale at a Kindle Price of USD 7.99. I read and reviewed it at the author’s request and was not compensated in any way.