I am suddenly back into the reading habit. It feels great because I have been away from books for so long. Did catch a few on the Kindle but the smell, feel, texture and romance of physical books... umm.. that's something else.
The Girl Next Door is the story of the inhabitants of a specific building in Manhattan. What better setting to produce the story of intertwining lives than that! The story starts off a bit tediously as Nobel begins to describe each household in detail. Albeit, the characters are very articulately developed and I remember hardly any titles where the nuances in human relationships are so beautifully captured and described.
As a reader, you are aware that the characters will start to cross ways soon enough but how and when? Then mid-way the pace picks up as the reader is cleverly led from one story into another and the connections start to get clearer.
The last part of the book is rather cliched and the author's temptation to take every story to a 'happily ever after' stage is not very appealing. In real life, and that's what the book's characters are - very realistic, people don't necessarily end up tying all the loose ends. That is where the book fails to impress, according to me.
My rating: 3 out of 5
The Girl Next Door is the story of the inhabitants of a specific building in Manhattan. What better setting to produce the story of intertwining lives than that! The story starts off a bit tediously as Nobel begins to describe each household in detail. Albeit, the characters are very articulately developed and I remember hardly any titles where the nuances in human relationships are so beautifully captured and described.
As a reader, you are aware that the characters will start to cross ways soon enough but how and when? Then mid-way the pace picks up as the reader is cleverly led from one story into another and the connections start to get clearer.
The last part of the book is rather cliched and the author's temptation to take every story to a 'happily ever after' stage is not very appealing. In real life, and that's what the book's characters are - very realistic, people don't necessarily end up tying all the loose ends. That is where the book fails to impress, according to me.
My rating: 3 out of 5
