Girls Burn Brighter: A Novel

I like the idea of this book. I like the celebration of feminine friendship and the exposition of the inequalities and violence that girls go through all over the world but I feel that this book has so much unachieved potential. It starts of so well with the beginnings of characters we could potentially care about but before we can truly understand them it becomes a series of increasingly tortured experiences and events for the two main characters Poornima and Savitha, supporting the authors repeatedly stated (even if true) thesis that girls have a low status in society. I feel like this book could have been stronger without such a strongly stated thesis, that it would have been better if we were left to make our own inferences and conclusions based on strong, well-developed characters and a strong plot, if we were allowed to understand these girls more deeply instead of made to see them as incidental people who terrible things kept happening to.The characterization and the plotting of this novel to me, are the weakest points of this novel. From the beginning, we don’t get to know either Poornima and Savitha outside of the fact that they’re girls who are discriminated against. What does Poornima like, what does she dream of, what’s her ambition if anything, if she doesn’t get married, what would she like to do? How? What’s her relationship with her siblings? We don’t get to know any of that and then we’re introduced to her friend, Savitha, whose father more or less drank his family’s future away but then he’s presented as the epitome of supportive fatherhood- what made him change, why doesn’t Savitha loathe him, why is she sympathetic towards him? What is Savitha’s endgame and what was her goal if any for her family? What’s her relationship like with her mother? Why are she and Poornima friends- what is it they have in common, what do they like about each other, what do they see in each other? I realize that these girls probably don’t have a lot of efficacy and agency but they are human and with that comes dreams and character and complexity which I feel was lacking in this. I feel like developing those stories and characters and relationships would have made a richer story- rather than everything feeling super on the surface and a little contrived. As for the plotting, I understand that when it rains, it pours, so I find it totally believable that these girls in such a vulnerable situation could go through one terror after the other. That said, there are quite a lot of Deus Ex Machina moments to further the author’s general thesis for this book on the status of girls. I think this weakened the story a lot. One or two contrived bits would be fine but the coincidence of how Poornima kept happening on Savitha wasn’t the best and I’m someone who likes HEAs and romance novels so I’m VERY accustomed to contrived and I, of all people, am saying this was a bit much.Finally, my biggest wish for this book is for the author not to have stated her thesis so openly at the beginning. I wish this story had been allowed to be what it could have been without being told repeatedly what it’s about. There’s a lot of being told “that’s the thing with girls” and a lot of proselytizing about the low status of girls and as a feminist and someone who is also from a country where girls and women don’t have the highest status and violence is frequently enacted against them as a result, I understand why this is something the author is passionate about not getting lost in this novel. But from a fiction-reading point of view, it was too message-heavy. The characters and events could have conveyed the message in a more meaningful way than being told almost every page the topic and major theme of the book without any subtlety or art. I would recommend this novel for anyone who is interested in fiction that features female friendship, the global status of women, gender and development in the Global South, human trafficking and those kinds of development-y topics in their fiction because this is pretty overtly development fiction.

If you enjoy reading about female friendship, the kind where a girl meets someone that answers a missing part of their soul, then this is a really good book. In fact, one of the reasons I read this book is because it was suggested after Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend series. They are very different books, though, except for examining how girls become best friends and the hardship universal to women. However, the violence and struggles the main characters face means this is not something everyone can read and walk away okay. I struggled to put this book down in the short two days I read it, because it was that good. Learning about Indian culture exposed both the beauty of the wedding ceremonies, the traditional dress, and local cuisine, while also examining the struggles faced by the fairer sex in that country. These problems are rather universal to many cultures throughout the world; alcoholism, poverty, death of a parent, the arranged marriage of young girls, domestic violence, rape, the import of human and sex trafficking in America, forced prostitution, and vitriol attacks are just some of the issues examined in the novel. Rao makes you care about the characters, though, and actually want to bear witness to both their suffering and their humanity in the face of such pain. I felt like even if I couldn't save the girls in the novel, I could at least read about their suffering and yet managing to live through it. Besides friendship, I think one of the major themes of the novel is that life is full of much pain but also much joy. Another is that to become the master of our own fate, we must go to extraordinary lengths, whether it means leaving family or friends behind.I've bought countless books on Amazon and think this is my first review. If not, there are few other books I have reviewed. As noted in a journal and probably other reviews, their is a rather unlikely ending, but I was personally satisfied and felt that closure had occurred. I rarely give out five stars, so four stars means I would recommend it to people. I would choose this book for a book club or to suggest to a friend or a family member.

Once I began reading I found it hard to stop. The story was rich including life style and culture of India and many aspects of rural life of a poor family who depend on weaving cotton as their subsistence. The story follows two young Indian girls and how they get involved into the hands of human trafficking of slave labor. Each girl gets pulled into the underworld and are separated from each other. At the end the author finds a ways for them to find each other again through the compassion of one of the underworld bosses. In the ending I felt a little cheated that the author could have added just a few more sentences to substantiate the final reunion and their reaction to seeing one another. I do not mean a fairytale ending. Just a more complete reunion of the two girls and I could have scored the book higher.

It was gripping and poetic but hard to take the sexual abuse. Disappoint ed byThe conclusion. It seemed unfinished

I thought at first the book was quite difficult to get into but once I did I couldn't stop reading. However, I couldn't help but think it was just continuous bad luck for the 2 main characters which at times made it a harrowing, difficult read.

Overall this book was well-written It was a harsh eye-opener to events that still occur in today's society I wish it had some lighter moments but maybe we should be aware that life is so different in other countries

This book can make difficult reading at times - the girls go through so much - but I needed stick with it and see it to the end

Great read