I was so disappointed by this book because I really wanted to love it. Like the bones were there. The story itself and the overall plot was fascinating. I enjoyed hearing about Mukta and Tara's lives and I really wanted to love them.

Most of this book is told from the perspective of the two characters looking back on their lives. They already have a distance of the events being discussed and because of this, as a reader I did too. Nothing felt like it was being experienced in the moment so none of the emotion hit me as hard as I wanted it to. The characters were sad a lot, but it felt more like they were talking about being sad rather than actually feeling sad. I wanted to feel sad with them.

The pacing in this book threw me off a lot. Tara goes back to India to search for Mukta and it alternates between the past when they were children and the present day. At one point Tara was talking to her friend and mentioned that she'd been in India for three months. I was gobsmacked. Like I literally thought it had been a few days and here she was talking about months. I've never been so confused about a timeline before.

It felt like there wasn't enough time or depth spent on some truly traumatic moments. Mukta is raped as a young child, and after the fact it's never really brought up again. Her mother is murdered in front of her and it barely feels like a scene in a book. So many things felt glossed over when I wanted them to be explored. When Mukta has HIV, they barely even say that. It's whispered about in vague terms in the narration. That happened with so many events that sometimes I found myself a little confused to what had actually happened.

I almost gave this book three stars just because I did so enjoy the overall story, but I feel it was really let down by the writing style. I was so bitterly disappointed because the whole time reading I tried really hard to love this, but I just couldn't.