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You’re generally a dog person or a cat person. Very rarely, are you both. I’m biased toward dogs, having always had a pet or two while growing up. Cats used to scare me. Something about the way they moved their bodies sent a shiver down my spine. Then a friend got a cat and I was forced to make friends with her, and even follow her (the cat) on Instagram. Yes, the cat has a separate Instagram account. That might not surprise many people these days as most pets seem to have social media accounts with their humans as managers. But I was in shock for quite a while—I was following a cat. Worse, the cat wasn’t even following me. My friend told me cats were easier to care for—they didn’t require as much attention as dogs, kept pretty much to themselves, and were cleaner too. I was intrigued. Not so much as to get a cat myself but enough to read books where cats made regular appearances or were central characters. I have to admit they were fun, and reading such books has now made me less scared of cats. ‘She and Her Cat’ by Makoto Shinkai is a series of interconnected short stories about the connection between people and their pets as well as people themselves. There’s a devoted cat named Chobi who wills his young owner to end a faltering relationship that’s causing her much anguish. There’s a spirited young cat who grows up under the care of a gifted artist who misunderstands her boss’ enthusiasm for her paintings. Cookie, a kitten, hatches a plan to persuade her reclusive owner to go outside after the death of her friend. Then, finally, there’s a woman who has dedicated her life to caring for others. She learns an invaluable lesson in independence from the feral cat that replaces her wise old dog. These vignettes capture the cat’s complex thoughts, emotions, and behavior with such clarity that you are left marveling at how they can be great companions while being so fiercely independent. Since the narration goes back and forth between the cats and humans, it feels really refreshing. You don’t have to love cats to fall in love with this book. There’s a lot of wisdom and warmth in these stories. My only complaint is that the stories were too short and sometimes you didn’t get to know the characters very well. Otherwise, She and Her Cat is a comforting read that’s just right for the weekend. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60049848-she-and-her-cat Four stars She and Her Cat Makoto Shinkai & Naruki Nagakawa Translated into English by Ginny Tapley Takemori Published: 2022 Publisher: Atria Books Pages: 180, Hardcover

I don’t remember the last time I laughed so hard while reading a book. ‘Finlay Donovan is Killing It’ by Elle Cosimano made me giggle and snort. It’s really not a good idea to read this book at work or in public spaces. People will look at you like you’ve lost it. And you very well might have since Cosimano’s writing is witty and sharp making Finlay come alive right before your eyes. I read this book at the beginning of January and I’m still thinking about it. I can’t wait to get my hands on the sequel—Finlay Donovan Knocks ‘Em Dead—the premise of which was set at the end of the first book. I’m so happy that the third part of what is now a series—Finlay Donovan Jumps the Gun—was just released on the last day of January this year. Even if the books are ten percent as good as Finlay Donovan is Killing It, I know I’m in for a rollicking ride. Finlay Donovan is Killing It starts with Finlay being overheard discussing the plot of her new suspense novel over lunch with her agent. Only, she’s mistaken for a contract killer and hired to kill someone. Finlay isn’t a murderer and has no intentions of actually killing someone but she is intrigued. So, she goes to meet the man she’s supposed to get rid of and, somehow, by the end of their meeting, the man ends up dead. In Finlay’s garage. To make things worse, Finlay has to submit the draft of her book to her agent. Else she could lose the contract and, as a single mom, she can’t afford that. Her husband and his partner are already vying for the sole custody of her daughter, claiming she’s an unfit parent. She desperately wants to be able to give her daughter the things she needs and wants. Desperate, she fictionalized the truth and hands in the draft. Her agent and editor love it and they want her to work on the story. But her book could be all the evidence the police need to put her behind bars. A great thing about the book, besides the story obviously, is that it has carefully crafted characters that add different dimensions to the plot. Cosimano has fleshed them out really well. Finlay’s nanny Vero adds a lot of spunk to the story. She’s the yin to Finlay’s yang. She balances things out and her laid-back attitude is something you wish you could emulate. Vero is also the friend everyone will wish they had. There are other interesting characters like Finlay’s four-year-old daughter, Delia, and her sister Georgia, who is a cop and hasn’t been on a date in 10 years. All in all, the eclectic mix of characters coupled with a great story will keep you hooked till the very end. Four and a half stars Finlay Donovan is Killing It Elle Cosimano Published: 2021 Publisher: Headline Review Pages: 359, Paperback https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53138099-finlay-donovan-is-killing-it

I was excited about Lucy Foley’s latest novel ‘The Paris Apartment’ as I had loved ‘The Guest List’. The book had an Agatha Christie vibe to it and was outlandish and ominous at the same time. Narrated from six different POVs, the story was fast-paced and gripping. Foley gave me a much-needed break from reality. I desperately wanted her to tell me another story. I wanted to be under the same spell. The Paris Apartment is about a journalist who mysteriously disappears from an apartment in Paris. His sister then arrives on the scene and starts poking around. It sounds like an engaging plot, and it’s not bad at all. It’s just that my expectations were sky-high after reading The Guest List. Most of the reviews on the GoodReads app say the same thing. Readers have liked The Paris Apartment a lot less than Foley’s other two books—The Guest List and ‘The Hunting Party’. In the book, we are introduced to Jess, who is lonely, and she’s broke. So, she asks her half-brother Ben if she can crash with him in order to get her life together. Surely, things will be better in Paris, she thinks. When she lands there from London, she finds a nice apartment that she’s not sure how Ben could have afforded in a journalist’s salary. But Ben’s not there. He wouldn’t have just deserted her like that. She knows something is wrong. She starts wondering if the other people in the apartment building know more than they are letting on about Ben’s disappearance. Everyone appears mysterious and each of them seems to have a motive. The more Jess starts digging around, the more suspicious she becomes that the neighbors are involved in something they want to hide. She repeatedly puts herself in harm’s way as someone isn’t happy with all the questions she’s asking. The Paris Apartment is dark and unsettling but there’s nothing new here for thriller and murder mystery lovers. It’s a classic locked-room mystery. It’s just that there’s no sense of urgency or claustrophobia which is what makes stories like these menacing. The pacing is also a bit slow. Foley, while trying to flesh out her characters, has sort of dragged on the plot. But a respite comes in the form of short chapters and the book does take off in the second half. All in all, it’s not a great book but you can pick it up when you want something light to read. Three stars Fiction The Paris Apartment Lucy Foley Published: 2022 Publisher: Harper Collins Publishers Pages: 410, Paperback    

‘My Year of Rest and Relaxation’ sounds like a chill, laid-back book that you could probably read on a holiday. But Ottessa Moshfegh’s second novel which was published in 2018 narrates the story of a young girl who starts relying on prescription drugs in order to sleep for an entire year. Loss and grief feature heavily in the story which tackles serious subjects like relationship issues and mental health. The narrator is a young unnamed woman in New York. She is just out of high school and is working as a receptionist at an art gallery. She has a lot of problems, and childhood trauma to deal with. Her father ignored her, and her mother was a drunk who used Valium to pacify her when she was a baby. She thinks of their deaths as just another way in which they rejected her. Worse, she doesn’t like her best friend, Reva and she has always felt used by her boyfriend, Trevor. Now he’s her ex, but she can’t stop obsessing over him. Thankfully, her inheritance allows her to do as she pleases without having to worry about money. So, she decides to take a year off and recover—by taking as many drugs as possible and sleeping for days on end. She believes a chemically induced chrysalis is the only way she can fix herself. Her partner-in-crime in all this is Dr Tuttle whose go-to medical advice is ‘dial 911 if something bad happens’. Moshfegh has been criticized for writing characters who are repulsive or repulsed by themselves. But by doing so, she hits home the fact that people are never perfect. We all have a dark side to ourselves that, as much as we might try, we don’t always succeed in hiding. My Year of Rest and Relaxation is darkly humorous and makes you feel seen and heard, despite not always being able to relate to the narrator. Fair warning though, it could be a little triggering for those dealing with anxiety, depression, or other mental health issues. About the author Ottessa Moshfegh is a fiction writer from New England. Her first book, McGlue, a novella, won the Fence Modern Prize in Prose and the Believer Book Award. Her first novel, Eileen, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction. She is also the author of the short story collection ‘Homesick for Another World’. Four stars Fiction My Year of Rest and Relaxation Ottessa Moshfegh Published: 2018 Publisher: Penguin Press Pages: 304, Paperback  

Sometimes, out of nowhere, you stumble across some books and authors and your life is forever changed. ‘The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels’ by the fascinating author India Holton (who loves writing about uppity women and drinking copious amounts of tea) is perhaps my best book of 2022. It’s charming. It’s funny. It will make me smile every time I will think of it (which I’m sure will be quite often). The story grabs you by the lapels and doesn’t let go until the last page. How I wished the book were longer. Set in an alternate version of Victorian-era London, the Wisteria Society is made up of a group of women pirates who hunt (read steal) treasures in flying (stolen) battle houses. Cecilia Bassingthwaite is an ambitious member of the society. She is, however, desperate for a promotion. Only it keeps eluding her for one reason or another. Then her aunt, along with other society members, is kidnapped and Cecilia obviously wants to save them—she loves her aunt but she also feels saving the society will earn her that promotion. Cecilia teams up with Ned Lightbourne, the man who would have been her assassin had he not fallen in love with her. Ned has been contracted by Cecilia’s nemesis to kill her. Her father, Captain Morvath, hired him to protect her. Then, he also claims to be loyal to the crown and so he’s only following orders to keep a close eye on the lady pirates, especially Cecilia. There’s a lot of confusion about his real identity but there’s no denying that he’s charming. He could very well be the modern-day version of Jane Austen’s Mr Darcy. The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels is a laugh-riot. The side characters are quirky and add much craziness and confusion to the story. Their banter is witty and their personalities are unique. There is a lot of violence but it’s cartoon-style violence. You will be reminded of the Tom and Jerry or Popeye reruns you used to watch as a child. The twists and turns keep you guessing what will happen next, while steamy romance occasionally makes you blush. If you have enjoyed the classics, especially Bronte and Austen, there are plenty of references that will tug at your heartstrings. Holton’s writing perfectly complements the Victorian setting so much so that you feel like she’s a writer from that era. It’s a good book that will get your mind off things that have been troubling you while simultaneously reminding you of some of your favorite books. Four stars Fiction The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels India Holton Published: 2021 Publisher: Penguin Random House UK Pages: 324, Paperback

First, a shoutout to all translators around the world. Thanks to them, those who primarily read in English get to enjoy all sorts of stories from across cultures and countries. Philip Gabriel is an American translator mostly known for his translations of Haruki Murakami’s books (‘Kafka on the Shore’, ‘Sputnik Sweetheart’, ‘What I Talk About When I Talk About Running’, among others) and of works by Nobel Prize-winner Kenzaburō Ōe (‘Somersault’). He also translated one of my absolute favorite books, ‘The Traveling Cat Chronicles’ by Hiro Arikawa—a story about a man and his adopted cat traveling across Japan, as narrated by the cat. I was browsing through a local bookstore when I came across ‘Lonely Castle in the Mirror’ by Mizuki Tsujimura. Apparently, she’s a well-known author of bestselling mystery novels in Japan. But I was reading something else at that moment and had a few more books on my TBR pile at home. I had no intention of buying more books (as readers often tell themselves when they mindlessly enter a bookstore). I was just killing time while my takeaway was getting ready at the restaurant next to it. But I was fascinated by the blurb. And then I found out that Gabriel had translated it. The protagonist Kokoro hasn’t been to school in a while. Her mother is trying to convince her to join a new one but Kokoro just can’t bring herself to step out of the house. Then one day, the mirror in her room starts glowing. Through the mirror, she is transported into a castle where she meets six other children who, for reasons of their own, aren’t going to school either. There they meet the Wolf Queen—a strange girl in a wolf mask—who sets them on a mission: to find the wishing room and the key that unlocks it. The one who does so will be granted a wish, she tells them. It’s an interesting story. It also deals with important issues like bullying and mental health. The writing isn’t bad. The characters are well-fleshed out. But something about the execution of the plot doesn’t feel right. It starts off really slow, with the children getting to know one another and traveling back and forth between their homes and the castle. There’s a laid back approach to storytelling up until more than halfway through the book. And then, suddenly, the writer decides to wrap up the story and rushes through it. There isn’t a natural progression to events. That way, the ending feels forced. Two and a half stars Lonely Castle in the Mirror Mizuki Tsujimura Translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel Published: 2021 Publisher: Penguin Random House UK Pages: 354, Paperback

This review does not have a rating because how do you rate a true story that has so much mental and physical anguish, injustices, cruelties, and pain? By choosing to tell the story of her escape from North Korea, Yeonmi Park has done a brave thing. It has endangered her life, and the lives of her family back home, she says in the book. But writing the book wasn’t just for catharsis. It’s also to tell the world about North Korea and the brutal ways in which the one-party totalitarian dictatorship keeps its people under control. Park was born in the North Korean city of Hyesan, close to the Chinese border. Her family depended on black market trading to survive the North Korean famine in the 1990s. As a child, her mother told her she shouldn’t speak out loud as mice and rats could hear her thoughts, and thus the Great Leader would come to know things and punish her. At school, all she knew of the outside world was that Americans were evil. Unable to bear the horrors of the Kim dictatorship, she and her mother fled to China when Park was just 13 years old. Written when she was 18 years old, ‘In Order to Live’ narrates the horrors Park and her family faced while living in North Korea. The people there, she says, are so brainwashed by political propaganda that they don’t know any better—they think the atrocities they have to deal with are part and parcel of daily life. Park also writes about the years when she was trafficked around northern China and had to deal with gangsters running prostitution rackets. They had to take an indirect route, through the freezing Gobi Desert in Mongolia, to get to South Korea. Park’s story is heartbreaking. There were many instances when I welled up and had to put the book away. It’s unimaginable that someone has had to go through so much. I found myself wishing some really bad things for the North Korean dictators. When Park went on TV to talk about life in North Korea, the Kim government tried to discredit her—calling her a liar and making public recordings of those who knew her saying bad things about her. Park knew writing the book would be risky—she was worried about her relatives back home in Hyesan—but she felt in her heart that what was happening back in North Korea was unacceptable and the world needed to know to perhaps be able to stop it someday. The writing is a tad bit pretentious at times, with lines like ‘I inhaled books like other people breathe air’ and such. But don’t let that stop you from reading ‘In Order to Live’ as it’s an inspiring story of the power of hope and resilience in the darkest of times. Non-fiction In Order to Live Yeonmi Park Published: 2015 Publisher: Penguin Random House UK Pages: 272, Paperback

Lounging on the couch with a hot cup of tea (or coffee, if you are so inclined) and a good, comforting read is a great stress buster. In winter, because there’s a nip in the air, this can feel even more relaxing and it can really help the endorphins to kick in as well. There are some books that I reread whenever I want that feel-good winter vibe. So, grab a soft blanket, make yourself a cup of your favorite hot beverage, and curl up with one of these five amazing and uplifting books this weekend. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern About a circus that appears and disappears suddenly in different parts of the world—New York, Boston, London, and so on—and operates only during the nighttime, The Night Circus is an intensely visual and imaginative story. Two gifted illusionists Marco and Celia are pitted against each other in an intricate, lifelong game they don’t really understand but for which they were being trained since grade school.  Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi At a café in Tokyo, visitors are served great coffee along with the chance to travel back in time, as long as they return before the coffee gets cold. There’s a woman who goes back in her past to confront the lover who left her, and a wife who wants to get a letter her husband wrote to her before his memory started to fade, among others. Though the writing is a tad bit repetitive, this book is a gentle reminder about the need to value what we have, thus far, taken for granted in life.  The House in the Cerulean Sea by T. J. Klune This is just great fun. It will make you happy. You will wish you lived in this world where magical creatures (with ministries governing them) are real. The characters are fascinating and the writing is really good too. The narrator Linus is rigid in his ways but at the same time acutely aware of his flaws. Getting to know him brings you a little bit closer to understanding people and how they think in general.  Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata Convenience Store Woman is a short book about a 36-year-old who works at a convenience store and has no ambitions whatsoever to ‘move up in life’ as society expects her to. This unusual psyche of the protagonist forces us to take a closer look at our work culture and the pressures to conform. I’ll be honest, reading it could kindle an existential crisis but it can also lessen your fears about life and where you’re headed, depending on your mindset actually. Roar by Cecelia Ahern A collection of short stories about fearless women, Roar is a delight. Every story will warm your heart and make you smile. The 30 stories in this anthology deal with discrimination, abandonment, and loneliness among other things. These are cautionary tales as well as stories that fill you with hope. Some are funny and sarcastic, while others make your heart ache (in a good way). It will make you think about all the different things a woman can be and how powerful and empowering that is.