Hey everyone! While I was gone this page gathered quite a bit of attention, so if you've joined my community recently, thank you so much and welcome!

A little disclaimer though: I don't treat this space as a ~ bookstagram~ and my captions are anything but critical reviews. The whole idea is to document my thoughts on the books I read and put it out there in the world for people to discover. But mostly just for myself, if the need ever arises for me to return to how I'd felt about a certain book. Which it does. Anyway, enough rambling, now I must steer back to the point.

I'd read Home Fire in the month of Feb and though my memory is misty, I can't seem to let go of what an emotional banger this story was. Isma is the elder sister to twins - Aneeka and Parvaiz - who raised them after their parents passed away; a small Pakistani family trying to beat the daily bigotry that comes uninvited with being muslims who have now found home in London. The book takes us through their lives, as Shamsie gives each of them a separate chapter, including other crucial characters I'd be unfair to tell you about.

Sparing any more details may dilute the experience of those who wish to pick it up, and the gut wrenching journey it takes the reader on. This story made me weep & angry equal amounts, brimming with a pervasive sense of dread and despair, an account of our world's cold-blooded reality that normalises raging war against people of certain faiths which they barely have a say in choosing.

Kamila's writing is so captivating & dreamy even while being gaspingly tragic, and her sudden riotous revelations deeply shook me to the core. The ending, though, was brutal on an inconsolable level. So if there's heaps of sadness that you've internalized and repressed over the past many months, Home Fire will relieve you from it all. I just hope not in one go.

This book is a retelling of Sophocles's play Antigone, which I came to know about only after I was done reading it. Incredibly written by Kamila Shamsie. I would love to recommend this book to you all. I bet you'll not regret investing your time for this book.

If you've read it already then let us know your thoughts on this book in the comments. See you soon!