Tamanna Tabassum Urmi

I'll highly recommend this book to those women of 30s who have a perfect life but doesn’t find the inner peace. Linda, the protagonist, is a woman of 30s who has a very "so-called" happy life with a loving husband and two kids. She possesses enough wealth and a good career. She lacks nothing but what she lacks most is the inner happiness. Life has become a monotonous routine for her, obviously there is no excitement. Being a journalist, she once gets the chance of interviewing her ex-boyfriend, Jacob and the turning point starts here in her life. She knows that she is entering a loop that might destroy her everything. Still she doesn’t want to get out of that abyss. I must appreciate the way Coelho has portrayed the inner thoughts of Linda. She is the voice of many women who are going through the same inner storms and don't know how to add some twists in their life. They become puzzled at some point, which is why they make mistakes like Linda did but deep inside, they feel guilty and want to continue a normal life although the scars remain alive in their hearts. Love might occur any time in one's life and it might appear in disguise of adultery or extramarital affair. For this reason, I find Linda's falling in love with Jacob quite normal and reasonable. There are so many dialogues which reflect the harsh realities of life. One of them is,"If married people, for whatever reason, decide to look for another partner, this does not necessarily mean that the couple's relationship is not doing well.........It's a combination of factors." Another one is,"Men cheat because it’s in their genetic code. A woman does it because she doesn’t have enough dignity; in addition to handing over her body, she always ends up handing over a bit of heart."