East Of The Sun - Julia Gregson

East of the Sun, is a story of three women in the Late 20's who travel to India. One is betrothed to solider, her best friend and bridesmaid, who has to marry or leave shortly after the wedding. And the more main character Viva their chaperone, who is returning to India after growing up their as a child and moving to Britain.  We follow their lives and how they twist and turn as they all prepare to live their lives in India. 

Read -  I saw it on a friends bookshelf and it looked like it could be quite interesting. 

For me East of the Sun,  had a bit of a slow sluggish start and i found it quite heavy going, but it slowly started to pick up and about half way through as the book picked up momentum I found myself getting more into it.  Some of the historical references, and the time period for me was questionable but then i am no expert of the 20's, just several times left me going was this right for this the time period it was set. Although set in India it was a very British india, and you didn't really get to know much of a real India. 

I found the characters quite interesting, and their lives interesting, but i don't think we followed them in depth and a lot of issues were skirted around. For example when first reading the book we focused on Rose and her maragge to Jack and how she felt, but thier was not much on the wedding or her relationship with Jack. This and other issues missed made the book feel almost incomplete.

I found the writing style a bit sluggish, but as i said it started to pick up. The story was ok, i found myself getting annoyed at some of the choices of the path lines the writer had chosen. Their was one point in the book that i got slightly frustrated about. Why write a nice girly novel then  throw in some unnecessary violence, which felt like she threw it in, without really concluding it. Im not sure if Gregson did this to spice up the story but that section of the story held no consequences for the rest of the plot. This stemmed from the section of another Character met in the book Guy Glover which seemed to distract from the original story and didn't really hold much weight in the book.  

Overall apart from what I have hightlighted it wasnt a bad book. It was good to read, kept up pace and was fairly interesting. I wouldnt say its a must read book, but if you are about to read it, the story is quite nice and its a pleasent enough read.   It makes a good holiday book or a bedtime story.