Two of my favourite easy-read genres in one: a mystery novel and chick lit.
The book is about four former schoolmates recalled by the principal to shed light on a classmate’s death during their last year at school. Three of the women now live in London—a rich, bored wife, a woman struggling with a bad marriage, and a ‘career woman’. The fourth character, a Bollywood star, seems as if she was thrown in by chance.
Misra has a knack for dialogues and for getting people’s emotions down pat. I also liked the fact that she dealt with the strong bonds of female friends as the novel’s main theme. Friendship is often overlooked for love or treated as a subplot, but here it’s the very substance. But I wish there had been more of a resolution in the end. It felt almost as if the story led up to a precipice and then you really didn’t know what happened next to anyone. The tying up of loose ends is something I, as a reader, enjoy, but perhaps it’s a deliberate ploy on Misra’s part, a feeling of uncertainty about the future that we share along with her characters.
Reading Secrets and Lies was getting two of my favourite easy-read genres in one: a mystery novel and chick lit. This is something you should add to your rainy-day-with-a-cup-of-tea book list.