I am so glad I picked this book. Not only was it a relatively easy read, but all of the little stories somehow managed to draw in my attention without trying. Nine tales, nine different perspectives, and nine different issues, yet together they all shared the common theme of finding our way through the daily struggles that we all face, which are not as different as we like to think.

Even though the book switched back and forth solely between the Boston area and India, each story had its own rich characters that I found easy to identify with in one way or another. Especially for those us of in college and high school, Mrs Sen’s driving struggles are something we know all to well. Mrs Croft could resemble an elderly family member in many of our lives. And Mr Pirzada, separated from his family in the midst of a terrible war, is a painful reality for so many today as Americans fight in the Middle East and war is breaking out in Ukraine.

But something that I noticed as I read the book, almost like a pattern, was how each story ended with that tale’s main character coming to a realization about their own identity, and how the struggle they faced in their story impacted and changed them. Some of the characters went through major life changes, like moving across the world, while others made more personal leaps, like Mrs Das and her feelings regarding her family. I think that this book leaves us with many lessons we can take with us, which we can use to come to our own conclusions about ourselves. We may not be moving halfway across the world, but moving away to college can still be just as scary and uncertain.