Blog Tour ‘The Girl in The Road’ by Monica Byrne

In a world where global power has shifted east and revolution is brewing, a young woman sets out from her home in India on a desperate, profound journey of escape and discovery.

A young woman called Meena wakes up one morning covered in blood. There are mysterious snakebites across her chest. She knows she’s in danger but something has happened to her memory. All she can do is run – but why? And from whom?

As Meena plots her escape she hears of the Trail – an extraordinary, forbidden bridge that spans the Arabian Sea, connecting India to Africa like a silver ribbon. Its purpose is to harness the power of the ocean – Blue Energy – but it also offers a subculture of travellers a chance for sanctuary and adventure.

Convinced the Trail is her salvation, Meena gathers supplies – GPS, a scroll reader, a sealable waterproof pod. And so begins her extraordinary journey – both physical and spiritual –  from India to Ethiopia, the home of her birth. But as she runs away from the threat of violence she is also running towards a shocking revelation about her past and her family. 

A couple of weeks ago I was approached about the blog
tour of ‘The Girl in The Road’ by Monica Byrne. Since this book sounded very
interesting and since I really like the new cover by Blackfrairs, I signed up
for the tour as fast as I could.

In ‘The Girl in The Road’ we meet Meena. Meena wakes up
one morning covered in blood. There are mysterious snakebites on her chest.
Immediately Meena knows she is in danger, and she tries to flee India. On her
journey she learns about ‘The Trail’, an futuristic energy bridge across the
Arabian sea. While Meena is fleeing she slowly finds out more about her past,
and her past is not so ‘fun’ to remember.

We also meet Mariama, a west African girl who’s also
escaping her past by traveling to another country. The story alternates between
these two characters, but we soon find out that there is more to their story
than we first expected.

The thing that immediately came to mind when I began
writing this review, was that this book was written in a very interesting way.
Because of this it was not an easy book to read, there were a lot of different
names to get to know, there was some talk about modern technology which I had
some difficulty following in the beginning of the book and the characters are
all a little ‘weird’ in the sense that it took me some time to figure out what
there deal was. But if you keep on reading, this book is definitely worth your
time. It’s interesting, unlike anything I’ve read before and very fascinating.

There is a lot of mystery in this book. And not a lot is
revealed in the beginning. Slowly on some mysteries are resolved and I really
admire Monica Byrne for the way she wrote this book. This story is more intense
than I originally thought, and it’s even hard to read at times. But I’m so glad
I kept going because this is a book that stays with you.

To be honest, this book is not really my ‘normal’ kind of
read. But I did enjoy it, especially since it was a little out of my comfort
zone. So I give it 3 stars because I really did like it, but it did take me a
long time to really ‘get’ the story.

I received this book in exchange for my honest review from the Little, Brown Book Group.