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Alice Feeney’s book ‘His & Hers’ has a Netflix adaptation that I really enjoyed watching. Though I had heard quite a bit about the author before watching it, I hadn’t actually picked up any of her books. But His & Hers, a mindbending thriller about a murder in Blackdown village where the primary suspects of the case are DCI Jack Harper and his ex-wife, newsreader Anna Andrews, both of whom are investigating the case and suspect each other, had me on the edge of my seat. I wanted to read the book despite knowing what happens in the end. 

Initially I couldn’t get my hands on a copy of ‘His & Hers’ but I came across ‘My Husband’s Wife’ at the bookstore and despite the book not being my preferred size (book lovers will understand that there is always a preferred size and font, and maybe even paper), I couldn’t resist getting it. I wanted to read more of the author’s works after having such a good time watching His & Hers. The British novelist and former journalist has quite a few books to her credit and I pretty much intend to read them all. On my list are ‘Daisy Darker’, ‘Rock Paper Scissors’, and ‘Sometimes I Lie’. But I digress. 

Set in a village called Hope Falls, My Husband’s Wife is a far-fetched story full of intricate twists and turns. Eden Fox goes for a run right before her painting exhibition is set to take place and comes back to find that her key doesn’t fit the lock in the home she has recently moved into with her husband. A woman who looks like her opens the door and claims to be her. Worse, her husband says this stranger is his wife and that he doesn’t know who she is. It’s a convoluted plot that gets even more confusing as different narrators tell the story. It doesn’t help that the characters are unreliable and shifty. 

Spoiler Alert: I wasn’t satisfied with the hurried and incredulous ending. Nothing about the plot led to it. The plot and the ending, in my opinion, seemed like they belonged in two separate books. The problem with thrillers with too many twists and turns is that they stop being believable when there are just too many of them. It’s the same with jump scares. They lose their effect. To be honest, I’m still not sure what exactly happened and how it unfolded. I would give it a two and half out of five stars though it could have been a five out of five stars with a little more character development and fewer twists. 

Thriller

My Husband’s Wife

Alice Feeney

Published: 2026

Publisher: Flatiron Books

Pages: 310, Paperback

If there is one thing I enjoy as much as reading, it’s listening to people talk about the books they love. And there is no better place for it than BookTube where you will get to watch some phenomenal people talk about books that they have enjoyed. I have discovered many books through BookTube, and I must confess that I’m a tad bit addicted to it. I probably watch several videos daily. Some, I rewatch, just to hear people talk passionately about books or authors they can’t get enough of. 

There is a girl called Charu from Kitabi Cabins who talks about poetry with such warmth and enthusiasm that I have been inspired to read more poems. She has also introduced me to poets I would have perhaps never come across, like Shiv Kumar Batalvi and Amrita Pritam. I Will Meet You Again (Main Tainu Phir Milangi) is one of my favorite poems by Amrita that I have saved on my phone and read every other day. I must credit the channel for sparking a love for poetry in me. Even though I might not necessarily understand everything I read, something about how the words flow makes me feel at ease. My mind calms down and I feel recharged. And I might not have given poetry its due had it not been for Kitabi Cabins. 

If you like to read but don’t consume content from BookTube then I must say you are missing out. Not only will you come across new books and authors you will also be able to hear multiple viewpoints about books you have read through reviews and discussions or better yet, sometimes even be a part of those discussions, if you register in advance. If you want to explore this fascinating side of YouTube but don’t know where to start or what’s good, I’m recommending three channels I’m hooked on at the moment. Maybe these can help you kickstart your BookTube journey that is sure to open up a whole new world for you. 

Kitabi Cabins

I absolutely love Kitabi Cabins. It’s a channel dedicated to books that is run by Chalchitra Talks.  I recently came to know about them but I must have watched all their content and there are around 400 plus videos. I love Vaani and Charu. The way they talk about books is so intriguing and I have discovered many books and authors through them. Their love for reading is evident in the way they speak about the books they have read. Both of them are into slow, deep reading. They don’t read to reach an annual target of say like 50 books a year. They read to learn, and to understand the world and themselves better. There are also some interviews with authors and actors who are readers where they actively discuss books. These are mostly hosted by the channels’ founder. I love the one with Prajakta Koli (also known as MostlySane on YouTube) and the actor Namita Dubey (on Chalchitra Talks). I highly recommend this channel if you want to hear readers discuss books they have read in a way that makes you want to pick them up too. 

Read A Day Club

Run by two sisters, Read A Day Club can be your fix if you are into classic literature. Though the channel has been running since 2020, there are only 126 videos and most of them are under 20 minutes. But Amreen and Ayesha discuss classics with an unmatched fervor. I discovered Fernando Pessoa, a Portuguese poet and writer, through the channel and I’m forever indebted for it. I can assure you that Pessoa’s ‘The Book of Disquiet’ has life altering powers. The fragmented lifetime project that was published posthumously is a diary of sorts filled with thoughts, observations, and ruminations. It’s a great book for introspection and reflection. You can read it cover to cover but you don’t have to, choosing instead to dip in and out as you please. Read A Day club can be your entry point into a world of literature that you haven’t explored till date. 

Service 95

Service 95 is Dua Lipa’s website and it has a YouTube channel as well. The Service 95 book club is where you will find Dua Lipa discussing books she has read with writers who wrote them. It’s so interesting that you will be torn between wanting to binge watch the videos and saving them for later, not wanting to run out of content too soon. Most of the book discussions are well over the 40 minute mark but they still feel short. Some conversations that I have loved are ones with Margaret Atwood, David Szalay, and Ocean Vuong. Atwood is the master of her craft and Vuong’s ‘On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous’ is a phenomenal book as is his poetry collection ‘Time is a Mother’. Next on my watchlist is a conversation with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi. I’m saving it for a mundane day when I need something to inspire me. Service 95 Book Club is where many bestselling and award-winning authors are discussing their work and it’s definitely worth checking out. 

I first heard about Osamu Dazai on the internet, BookTube in particular, a few years back when the internet was suddenly abuzz with discussions about his books, especially his melancholy way of writing. I learnt quite a lot about his life from BookTubers, particularly his self-destructive ways, and it intrigued me. I googled him and read whatever I could find on him. Dazai’s life was traumatic and fascinating, and he lived life on the edge. 

Dazai was the sixth son of a wealthy politician. He was one of the best fiction authors of Japan during the second world war. Dazai lived a relatively short life, ending it by suicide in 1948, leaving behind an unfinished manuscript titled ‘Goodbye’. His novel ‘No Longer Human’ was one of the more popular ones among his works but I could only get my hands on ‘The Setting Sun’. The book is short, at just a little over a 100 pages, and is set in post-World War II Japan. 

The narrator of the story is 29-year-old Kazuko, a young woman from an aristocratic family that is slowly perishing. Kazuko is struggling with her mother’s declining health and her brother Naoji’s addiction. She’s wondering where her life is headed while trying to come to terms with what’s happening around her. The book is short but there’s a lot to unpack, especially since it questions what it means to be human in a changing world. The book, though written 79 years ago, feels as relevant today as it was back then. 

It’s believed that Dazai’s writing takes inspiration from his turbulent life. A sense of gloom pervaded his life and his works too have a dark and moody undertone. Dazai showed a lot of potential for writing from an early age but the sudden suicide of his favorite author Ryunosuke Akutagawa affected him and he spiraled into self-doubt and depression. He tried to commit suicide, ran away with a geisha, and became affiliated with the banned Japanese Communist Party. He even stopped going to university. 

His family ultimately disowned him and it was only after he tried to kill himself for the second time that his family agreed to take care of his finances if he completed his degree. He got married but his wife cheated on him with his best friend. They later divorced after an unsuccessful suicide attempt. He married another woman but also cheated on her with someone else, though he ultimately left them both. Dazai suffered from mental health problems and alcoholism and died by suicide on the fourth attempt.

You get a glimpse of the genius as well as his mental state in his books. I have heard that most of Dazai’s works have a fair bit of humor in them too but The Setting Sun is one of his bleaker books. Though short, Dazai has given attention to his characters to make readers care about and empathize with them. You can probably read The Setting Sun in a single sitting but you will be thinking about it long after having finished it. 

Fiction

The Setting Sun

Osamu Dazai

Published: 1947

Publisher: Shinchosha

Pages: 126, Paperback (Wilco edition reprint) 

Kiran Desai’s second novel ‘The Inheritance of Loss’ won the Man Booker Prize in 2006. In Nepal, there was quite a hullabaloo over it with readers calling it insensitive and prejudiced. I tried reading it but I couldn’t finish it. It wasn’t the depiction of Nepalis in the novel that made me unable to read it. I just couldn’t relate to the story. It felt a little off. I have since then heard people rave about the book as well as criticize it.

Readers in Nepal were infuriated by the way Desai had portrayed Nepalis in the book. They come across as crooks and people on the lowest rung of the social ladder. Desai’s disdain for Nepalis is palpable in the book, says a friend who is a voracious reader. And I agreed with her, having found what little I read quite off-putting. I believe writers should have the creative license to write uninhibitedly but to have their biases shine through is something else. So imagine my surprise when this friend told me she was reading Desai’s third novel, ‘The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny’, and that she was quite liking it. 

I bought the tomb of a book, priced at almost Rs 2000, on a whim. I’m a sucker for pretty covers and I fell in love with the deep blue cover with different phases of the moon on it. Also, Ann Patchett, one of my all time favorite authors, has endorsed the book. It’s right there on the cover: A spectacular literary achievement. Authors like Khaled Hosseini, Mohsin Hamid, Junot Diaz, Lauren Groff, among others also have wonderful things to say about the book. Plus, it took Desai almost 20 years to write the novel. I figured there must be something in it. I decided to read the book in the month of January.

A couple of hundred pages into the book, I loved it. The characters were multilayered and I could relate to them. There were many lines and paragraphs that resonated with me. I was even taking photos of them to send to my friends. Things took a downturn when I was a little over halfway into the book. The story moved slowly and many of the instances were not related to the main plot and just weighing it down. Despite its length, the ending feels rushed. I finished it in a month, reading 20 to 30 pages in a day. But if I hadn’t roped in a friend to read it with me, I wouldn’t have continued beyond the halfway mark. 

Desai also came across as tone deaf, since despite the uproar caused by The Inheritance of Loss in Nepal, she has once again inserted a Nepali security guard into the story. The character, that comes in the form of a minor detail in the story, feels like an afterthought. The portrayal of Nepalis as security guards aka ‘Bahadur’ in books always irks me. Have authors not seen any Nepali in any other position than guards? If that’s the case, then all Indian and other immigrants should only work in department stores. Why are they then portrayed as engineers, doctors, and hot shot CEOs? 

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny has many parallel plots that feel unnecessary. I struggled to remember what had happened to a certain character, for example Mina Foi who is Sonia’s aunt, when her story was told in bits and spurts and I had read many other character’s stories before getting back to her. That’s not to say that their stories are boring. Not in the least bit. It’s just that when there are stories of the protagonists’ grandfathers, mothers, aunts and various other relatives alongside the main plot, you struggle to remember who is who, how they are linked, and what happened in their lives. 

Though the book is essentially a love story, it’s also a story about immigration and the issues that come with it. But Desai didn’t know how to tell a story without dragging it out. Issues lose their gravitas when they are written like annoying complaints at best. Also the characters have a whiny voice and at times I was way too irritated to empathize with them. Kiran Desai isn’t an author I’m excited about or willing to read again, especially when she seems to be guided by fixed ideas and biases. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny had a promising start but it failed to deliver. Desai had all that time to tell a good story, instead she just makes her character mope around till forcibly tying things together in the end. 

Fiction

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

Kiran Desai

Published: 2025

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton 

Pages: 670, Hardcover