Padmini Sankar

This is a heartwarming story but I think it’s overhyped. There are large parts of it I skipped over as it was boring to read. There was a lot of ‘tell’ and not enough ‘show.’ But the basic story was good which is why I’ve given it 3 or maybe 3.5 stars.

A good read but a bit too long-winded. There are too many characters and you sometimes forget who’s who and have to look back. This is annoying. I also found it ghoulish and off-putting with the way the author described a person in medical terms. However, these are minor criticisms as the story and the characters, esp of Big Ammachi, Phillipose, Digby and Mariamma grip you. I also like the way the strands of the story come together at the end. Well worth the read, but not 5 stars.

Can’t get the hype over this book. I just couldn’t get the obsession of this woman over a childhood boyfriend. There’s nothing much about him that makes him likable. The adults in this novel are uniformly awful. The structure - moving from present to past — is hard to follow. And the ending is unsatisfying. What’s left? I struggled to read this but did so as my book club had chosen it.

Lyrical, beautiful, mysterious. This book kept me hooked from first page to— well, not the last, as I felt it kind of petered out toward the end. There was too much of descriptive details and I just wanted to know the answer to the whodunnit. But otherwise a brilliant book, and I’d give it a 4.5 ⭐️