Half Life by Roopa Farooki

Half Life by Roopa Farooki is my sixth Orbis Terrarum book which means that I only have two more to go! The author is from Lahore, Pakistan.

From Bookdepository:

'It's time to stop fighting, and go home'. Those were the words that finally persuaded Aruna to walk out of her East London flat in the middle of breakfast, wearing flimsy sandals on a brisk Spring day, carrying nothing more substantial than a handbag, and keep on walking. Leaving behind her marriage to Patrick, her adoring husband of less than a year, she gets on a plane to Singapore, running back home to the city and the old life she had run away from in the first place. And there she finds her childhood friend and former lover, Jazz, troubled by the pleas of the dying father he refuses to forgive, who has never stopped waiting for her to return. After years spent fleeing the ghosts of her past - the life that she and Jazz tried and failed to make together, the terrible revelation that tore their relationship apart, and the troubling psychological diagnosis she would rather forget - Aruna is about to discover that running away is easy. It is coming home - making peace with herself, Jazz and those they have loved - that is hard.

My thoughts:

Half Life caught my eye first because of the beautiful cover and second because in addition to London, it's based in Malaysia and Singapore. And those of you who know me, know that I will read any book which will take me to the two latter countries. I was a bit disappointed though because I didn't get the feel of the atmosphere as well as I would have liked.

At first I thought I had the story all figured out and actually felt quite annoyed by that. But in the end I was nicely suprised to find out that things weren't exactly as I thought they were and felt quite foolish! Unfortunately I didn't connect with any of the characters till the very end and didn't even like the main character Aruna, whose behaviour really got to me.

Farooki writes in a very flowing way, so the book is easy and fast to read. Like many of the books I've been reading lately, this one also has intense issues going on in the story but since I don't want to give anything of the story away, I'll just name manic depression as one of them.

I've read many praising reviews for this book, so if any of my readers have read it, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Like I said, the book was a flowing read and interesting enough to finish, so I can't say that I didn't like it at all, but it wasn't such a great read for me - I think I was expecting too much!