Title: The Reading List

Author: Sara Nisha Adams

Publisher: William Morrow 2021

Genre: Fiction

Pages: 380

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: 

Widower Mukesh lives a quiet life in Wembley, in West London after losing his beloved wife. He shops every Wednesday, goes to Temple, and worries about his granddaughter, Priya, who hides in her room reading while he spends his evenings watching nature documentaries.

Aleisha is a bright but anxious teenager working at the local library for the summer when she discovers a crumpled-up piece of paper in the back of To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s a list of novels that she’s never heard of before. Intrigued, and a little bored with her slow job at the checkout desk, she impulsively decides to read every book on the list, one after the other. As each story gives up its magic, the books transport Aleisha from the painful realities she’s facing at home.

When Mukesh arrives at the library, desperate to forge a connection with his bookworm granddaughter, Aleisha passes along the reading list…hoping that it will be a lifeline for him too. Slowly, the shared books create a connection between two lonely souls, as fiction helps them escape their grief and everyday troubles and find joy again. 

CW: Suicide

A lovely concept, poorly executed. The first few chapters were slightly confusing and not very engaging. Once we settled into the story, I expected to really connect to a few of the characters. Unfortunately things just seem to be drawn out and slow with mostly unlikeable characters. The exception was only Mukesh. He was the most fleshed out character, but even he could not redeem the rest of this story. Aleisha only become someone to root for in the last 20% of the novel. Way too late to really redeem this book. And then we get to the discussions of the books themselves. Mostly I was okay with them. The author didn’t go into enough detail about the various book and I was very disappointed by the dismissal of Pride and Prejudice. In the end, I just was very bored with the whole book.

Next up on the TBR pile: