Girls Burn Brighter by Shobha Rao

Girls Burn Brighter by Shobha Rao – Audio

Book Blurb:

When Poornima first meets Savitha, she feels something she thought she lost for good when her mother died: hope. Poornima’s father hires Savitha to work one of their sari looms, and the two girls are quickly drawn to one another. Savitha is even more impoverished than Poornima, but she is full of passion and energy. She shows Poornima how to find beauty in a bolt of indigo cloth, a bowl of yogurt rice and bananas, the warmth of friendship. Suddenly their Indian village doesn’t feel quite so claustrophobic, and Poornima begins to imagine a life beyond the arranged marriage her father is desperate to lock down for her. But when a devastating act of cruelty drives Savitha away, Poornima leaves behind everything she has ever known to find her friend again. Her journey takes her into the darkest corners of India’s underworld, on a harrowing cross-continental journey, and eventually to an apartment complex in Seattle. Alternating between the girls’ perspectives as they face relentless obstacles, Girls Burn Brighter introduces two heroines who never lose the hope that burns within them.

My Review: 4 stars

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Girls Burn Brighter is about girls born into a horrible life and how their friendship is the only hope they have. This is a dark book, quite vivid in its descriptions of abuse and some that still haunt me today.

One of the girls Poornima is named for the moon and other, Savitha, named for the sun, become allies, confidants and the yin to each of their yangs. Their existence is bleak at best, so it’s hard to understand that it only gets worse for these spirited and smart girls. Their bond was stronger and richer than most women’s’ friendships I’ve read about.

I had a hard time with the audio as there were many times that I wasn’t sure who was speaking. I kept going back fifteen seconds to relisten and see if I missed something, but I never did. I wonder if the book had italics or some other way that allowed the reader to know whose voice it was. For the overall effectiveness of the story, it didn’t matter, but during those moments, it was frustrating. In general, the writing was fluid and well-executed.

Once the girls are tragically separated, their stories mirror one another, yet they have no idea where the other is. The novel focuses on their quest to find one another and what they do to learn about the other one. The author definitely got the reader to understand the lives of many women in India. Sex trafficking, rape, abuse and lies were an integral part of the book. Please note this if this is a trigger for you.

After all the emotions the reader endures while reading this book, I wasn’t so keen on the ending. Although this story needed telling and I’m glad I read it, it was a tough read. It has received many five star reviews from other readers; I just couldn’t go there with my POV issues and the frustrating ending.

Quotes I liked:

What is love if not a hunger?”

“Understand this Poornima: that it’s better to be swallowed whole than in pieces.”

“And now, she realized, that’s all she’d ever be in the eyes of men: a thing to enter, to inhabit for a time, and then to leave.”

“Every moment in a woman’s life was a deal, a deal for her body: first for its blooming and then for its wilting; first for her bleeding and then for her virginity and then for her bearing (counting only the sons) and then for her widowing.”