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I first heard about Jojo Moyes because of her hugely popular book ‘Me Before You’. Published in 2012, this romance novel was all the hype back then. It turned my non-readers friends into readers overnight. The book has a sequel ‘After You’ which was published in 2015 and a second sequel ‘Still Me’ published in 2018. I often got asked if I had read the book. The answer to which was always a resounding no. And I had no intentions of reading it either. Something about the whole hullabaloo around the book had put me off, and I wasn’t a big reader of romance either. In a way, in my mind, I wrote Moyes off as a writer of fluff that I wasn’t going to waste my time on. 

Then a friend whose reading choices always fascinated me recommended ‘The Giver of Stars’ by Moyes. I reluctantly picked it up. I didn’t expect to like it but it was one of the best books I had read that year. I still recommend it to everyone I know and it’s one of my picks when I have to give a book to someone. Set in small-town 1930’s Kentucky, the book is based on the real-life Pack Horse Librarians of Kentucky, or the Horseback Librarian program as it was called then. The program delivered books as part of Eleanor Roosevelt’s traveling library and ran from 1935 to 1943, making books accessible to over 100,000 rural inhabitants. I love historical fiction and The Giver of Stars was compelling. Romance is one aspect of the novel but there’s a lot to it than just that. 

I have since then retracted my stand on Moyes and look forward to her books, though I still haven’t read Me Before You. ‘The Girl You Left Behind’ is another fascinating work that tells the story of two women who are connected by a beautiful painting. Moyes, I have come to realize, writes about women in an honest, empathetic, and engrossing way. She doesn’t show them as weaklings or as extremely courageous women through and through. Instead, she makes them completely human and relatable–with both strengths and weaknesses.

‘Someone Else’s Shoes’ is also the story of two women, Sam and Nisha, whose fates collide when they mistakenly pick up each other’s bags at the gym. Sam is struggling with a depressed husband and a boss who pretty much hates her. She can’t afford to lose her job because her family depends on the income. Worse, her best friend has cancer. So when she finds Christian Louboutin shoes and a Chanel jacket in a Marc Jacobs bag that she thought was hers, she tries them on and feels like a new person. 

Nisha (who the shoes belong to), on the other hand, had it all till she didn’t. Her lavish lifestyle comes to a startling halt when her husband throws her out of the penthouse they share, blocking her access to all their accounts as well as her clothes and shoes. She finds herself working in the same hotel where she once stayed in order to survive till she can eventually get back at Carl and reclaim what is rightfully hers. Then her husband offers her a settlement if she can return the Christian Louboutin shoes to him. The only problem is she doesn’t have them but she is determined to get it back which is how she eventually meets Sam and the two become unwilling allies in order to get their lives back on track. 

Narrated alternately by the two main characters, Someone Else’s Shoes is a compulsive read that you don’t want to put down. There’s a little bit of romance too but it fits into the storyline and doesn’t seem forced. It also deals with some heavy themes like identity, loss, and grief, though these aren’t given the seriousness they deserve. But I have no complaints about the writing or the plot. Sam and Nisha, and the friends they have and make along the way, are all interesting characters. I was hooked on this gorgeous book about the importance of female friendships.

Someone Else’s Shoes

Jojo Moyes

Published: 2023

Publisher: Penguin Random House UK

Pages: 423, Paperback

Megha Majumdar’s debut novel ‘A Burning’ was a New York Times bestseller. It was named one of the best books of 2020 by the Washington Post, New York Times, NPR, Vogue, and Time among others. It won the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Purasakar in 2021 besides being nominated for many other awards like the National Book Critic’s Circle John Leonard Prize and the American Library Association’s Andrew Carnegie Medal. Many readers reviewed it on YouTube and Instagram. 

I haven’t read it yet but quite a few of my friends have recommended it to me. That’s probably one reason why I picked up ‘A Guardian and a Thief’ by the same author. The second reason being a blurb by American essayist Stacy Schiff, whose biography of Vera Nabokov won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in biography. She writes: “Wondering if there’s a novel out there that gives Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road’ a run for its money? Here you go. An indelible piece of writing, in equal parts dazzling and devastating.”

A Guardian and a Thief tells the story of Ma and Boomba and the lengths they will go to for their families. It’s set in near-future Kolkata in India that is plagued by flooding and famine. Ma, her two-year-old daughter, Mishti, and her father are leaving Kolkata to join Ma’s husband in America. But Ma’s purse gets stolen the day after they receive their visas. It had all three passports. Ma tells nothing about the robbery to her husband who believes his family will soon be joining him. 

In Kolkata, she searches high and low for the thief who brought this misfortune upon her family. When Ma finally finds the thief, Boomba, he offers her a deal: He will give her back the passports if she agrees to give him her house when she leaves for America. The story is set amidst a worsening food crisis that drives both Ma and Boomba to do things they wouldn’t have had circumstances been different. Set over the course of one week, the plot revolves around Ma and Boomba’s struggle for survival when the odds are stacked against them. 

Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is one of my favorite books. A Guardian and a Thief is indeed reminiscent of that, and I loved it. What struck me the most about the book is that there are no heroes or villains here. Ma does many things that go against her morals, even stealing from the shelter she once worked at. Even though Boomba is a thief who commits a lot of crimes, he isn’t really in the wrong here. They are both two people trying to do what’s best for their families, and they both operate from a place of extreme love. The title thus applies to both characters. Each is a guardian and a thief. 

The book made me think about how people behave in the face of a crisis, and whether that is a truer reflection of who we actually are. Can you be principled when you are in grave trouble? Or do your instincts of self preservation override everything else? It’s interesting to try and get inside the character’s minds, with their conflicting thoughts and motives. They remind you of people you might know. They are relatable as well–you would easily behave the way they did had you been in their shoes. 

The ending seemed a bit rushed and over the top but other than that, I liked everything about the book–the plot, the setting, the characters, and the dystopian vibe. I found out that A Guardian and a Thief is actually a follow up to Majumdar’s debut novel, A Burning, after I had finished reading it. But the good thing is that it works wonderfully well as a standalone novel too. If you have enjoyed McCarthy’s The Road and have been searching for a story with a similar feel to it, this is one you won’t regret picking up. 

A Guardian and a Thief

Megha Majumdar

Published: 2025

Publisher: Penguin Random House India

Pages: 205, Hardcover

Elif Shafak is well known for ‘The Bastard of Istanbul’ and ‘The Forty Rules of Love’. These books catapulted the author to fame. She has written other books like ‘The Architect’s Apprentice’, ‘Honour’ and ‘Three Daughters of Eve’, all of which I found to be more interesting than the popular titles. ‘The Island of Missing Trees’, published in 2021, is my favorite out of all her works. Set in Cyprus and London, the story is narrated by a little girl and a fig tree that has seen generations of the girl’s family and knows their story intimately. It was fascinating and I have, since finishing the book, given out copies to many relatives and friends.  

I came across ‘Black Milk’ when I was just browsing through the bookstore looking for a short read. It’s a non-fiction work about postpartum depression and Shafak shares how she struggled with it. I will read anything Shafak writes because she does so gorgeously. But the blurb of Black Milk was intriguing. Since I was also going through motherhood, I thought this would be a good book to pick up. I wasn’t wrong. I have perhaps never felt as seen and validated as I have while I was reading the book. 

Postpartum depression affects many new mothers worldwide but it’s something that’s seldom talked about. In Nepal too, you’d be hard pressed to find women who are vocal about their struggles. It’s almost like you have failed as a mother if you are sad and unable to cope when there’s a baby who needs you. Our society puts so much pressure on women being ‘good mothers’ that they turn a blind eye to the myriad of conflicting emotions that women find themselves struggling with mostly because of fluctuating hormones.  

To be honest, the book addresses the question put forth to Shafak by another Turkish writer Adalet Agaoglu: Do you think a woman can manage motherhood and career at the same time and equally well? Shafak seeks to answer this question by dissecting the lives of other women writers and their careers and contemplating over her own experiences of juggling motherhood and writing. There is actually little about postpartum depression. Most of it comes at the end of the book. But it’s still an immersive and insightful read. I just found the blurb to be a bit misleading. 

The Turkish-British novelist, essayist, and activist, who writes in both Turkish and English, recounts how ‘words wouldn’t speak to her’ after the birth of her first child in 2006. She writes candidly about her inner voices urging her to focus on her writing and flourishing career and not be blindsided by the desire to have a baby. She introduces us to a harem of finger sized women who live inside her mind. These are all just different facets of her personality. 

It’s not just her own experiences that she shares in the memoir. She also writes about other writers’ experiences of juggling (or choosing not to juggle) motherhood and writing. She talks about Silvia Plath, Alice Walker, Simone de Beauvoir, and Virginia Woolf and their take on babies and why they chose to have or not have one. She also writes about the wives of famous writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Leo Tolstoy and how their talents were overshadowed by their husband’s popularity and analyzes how a patriarchal society reinforces that system. 

There’s a lot to unpack in Black Milk with Shafak questioning what it means to be a working woman and a mother and sometimes being compelled to choose one over the other. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and though it’s not a thick book, I took almost three weeks to read it because I found myself going back to many phrases and pages. My only issue with the book is that there’s a certain lightness while talking about something as serious as postpartum depression with Shafak wrapping up the book in a preachy tone. But I would still recommend it and I’m even thinking of giving it to some of my friends. 

Black Milk 

Elif Shafak

Translated by Hande Zapsu

Published: 2007

Publisher: Penguin Random House, UK

Pages: 267, Paperback

“It’s expensive to be rich,” writes Morgan Housel in his latest book, The Art of Spending Money, released on Oct 7. Housel, bestselling author of The Psychology of Money—already translated into Nepali—returns with a timely and insightful exploration of a topic often overlooked in personal finance: not how to earn or save money, but how to spend it wisely.

While countless books guide us on earning and investing, Housel argues that very few discuss what to do with money once we have it. He emphasizes that spending is not a science with fixed rules, but an art shaped by emotion, culture, and personal values. “Art can’t be distilled into a one-size-fits-all formula,” he notes. “It is complicated, often contradictory, and covers individuality, greed, jealousy, status, and regret.”

The book’s central message is simple: money can improve life—but only when used intentionally. Housel shows how money often becomes a measure of status rather than a source of happiness. Many spend to impress others or keep up appearances, yet true fulfillment comes from independence, meaningful experiences, and strong relationships. A larger home or nicer car only brings joy when it enables real connection—not merely to showcase wealth.

Housel also warns against the psychological traps of wealth. “Money will use you if you don’t use it intentionally,” he writes, highlighting how unchecked desire can distort priorities and identity. There is no universal rule for spending wisely: what brings happiness to one may feel unnecessary to another. The real challenge lies in understanding our own desires and aligning spending with what truly matters.

For Nepali readers, the book’s lessons resonate strongly. Social media, birthdays, festivals like Dashain and Tihar, and weddings often drive extravagant spending to “show up” for friends, neighbors, or peers. Housel’s call for mindful consumption encourages reflection: celebrate traditions and enjoy life, but spend to enrich your life—not to impress others. Simple budgeting, thoughtful gifting, and prioritizing long-term goals over social display can lead to greater contentment.

The Art of Spending Money is not about frugality. It is about living intentionally. The take-home message is clear: use money to make yourself happy, not to show others. True wealth lies in freedom, purpose, and the joy that comes from thoughtful choices, not appearances.