The whole time I was reading, it felt like I was just waiting for a punch line on an old joke that I already know about. Spends time at school getting an education and spends time playing games like hide and seek with her friends and cousins. The story is brilliant, John Marrs is brilliant at bringing each interwoven story together with characters you couldn't put together until he reveals why, and how. Nayomi Munaweera gives us a tender, frightening, thought-provoking story about a very specific girl, but the issues are universal—love, violence, fear, jealousy, otherness. Perhaps it's due to reading so many thrillers, but I found this one to be fairly predictable and a bit underwhelming near the end, as I kept waiting for that big twist that I didn't see coming.

Their silver, orange streaked quickness flashes all about me, their mouths coming up to nibble at whatever they can find, shins, calves, fingers. Every second evening she gets chained to a longer chain that allows her down one flight of stairs to the bathroom and dinner with her daughter Nina. I won't go into the plot except to say the story starts out well but the reveals were underwhelming with a total mess of a plot that became more unbelievable as the story progressed.I had heard alot of good things about this book and after reading The Passengers by this author last year I knew that I had to pick it up. I often preface any A Little Life recommendations with a 'be careful - it can be very graphic and impactful' but I don't think I feel compelled to do that with this novel).

She knows during these times that she must be quiet, must not make any noise, and let her mother rest. It rushes by, carrying all manner of things, furniture, quickly rolling trees with beseeching arms held out to the sky, drowned animals. John Marrs creates an intriguing and terrifying situation here for Maggie, who is chained and hidden in the house she shared with Nina.

I still rank Marrs as one of my favorite authors but this book took so long to get into, I definitely wouldn’t rank it as one of his best. Ganga’s childhood was an idyllic one, growing up in in an old and beautiful house nestled in the hills of Sri Lank

And should my soul soar, I promise that yours will sink like the heaviest of rocks, never to be seen again.Not only would it spice things up for me, I think it would also up the stakes and help with the far fetchedness so that the mystery could unwrap a little less conveniently. The tension between the main characters is palpable and you feel like you are treading on the most delicate of eggshells. The hunting guns are locked away in a chest in my father’s study, but the leopard is here as evidence of their presence. We meet our un-named narrator at the beginning of the story, and know that something bad has happened, but we don't know exactly why or how. But I ask because I want to hear him talk and also because I want to show off what I have learned in school.

Ganga is a young girl raised in 1980s Sri Lanka, an island nation as lush with culture and history as it is with monsoon-soaked vegetation, the only child of an educated, middle-class father and a beautiful but poor mother. But there are many things about the past that Nina doesn’t know, and Maggie is going to keep it that way—even if it kills her.If my mother came to know that I read in bathtub till 2 am she would do something like Maggie did to Nina ) and when I finished it I looked in the mirror and I realized this book is more scary than my face! She shows her characters no mercy, yet her grace and compassion are evident in the fullness with which she allows their stories to unfold.