TAG Book Review: Secret Daughter

Secret Daughter, by Shilpi Somaya Gowda, explores the power and strength of family relationships.

While growing up in San Francisco, Asha learns that she is adopted and this causes her to ponder about her identity.

Throughout her life, she has always wondered what it would be like to find her birth parents. Asha has many questions about her origin and believes that her birth parents hold the key to her answers.

Her relationship with her adoptive parents is distant because she accuses them of failing to accept her for who she is.

One day, Asha is granted a scholarship to study abroad in India, where her birth parents live. She takes this opportunity to pursue her career but she also searches for her birth parents.

Will Asha finally get the answers she seeks? Secret Daughter is an inspiring story which depicts the emotional rollercoaster that comes with being an adoptive child.

-- Written by Judy C.

TAG Book Review: Shadow of the Wind

I started reading this book while I was alone in an airport with three solid hours of waiting in my possession. Perfect time to start a book. I began reading the first few pages and from that moments alone, I knew I was going to fall madly in love with it.

The writing on its own is magically crafted; it doesn't even have as much as one word out of place. Everything is so perfectly sculpted and aligned, it just mesmerizes you with the poetic flow of it. It is absolutely nothing less than a breathtaking work of art. 

The story takes place in 1945 Barcelona, where a young boy named Daniel Sempere is taken to a hidden place called The Cemetery of Forgotten Books by his father, who tells him that it is a tradition to pick a book out. Daniel finds the book "The Shadow of the Wind" by Julian Carax and find the comfort he needs to deal with the death of his mother in it. When he seeks to find more of Carax' books, he finds out that someone has been going around burning all of them. Daniel might possibly be in possession of one of Carax' only books left. The story follows Daniel on his adventure as he starts to slowly discover Barcelona's deepest secrets.

There was absolutely nothing I didn't love about this book. I felt that everything about it was gold. I found myself constantly taken back to the streets of Barcelona when I wasn't reading. And while I was reading, I was completely in Daniel's world, and couldn't even force myself to put it down. Saying that it was a page turner would be a serious understatement; it honestly was so much more than that. I thought the Zafon did an excellent job with giving as much importance to both the plot and the characters, making the story so much more interesting. This is the type of book I would recommend for anybody. It is a hauntingly beautiful experience: read it.

-- Written by Neha C.