Not the kind of books I read and it did not engage me much and I did not complete the book.

Maybe i was not the right audience for this book and someone who is into this genre would enjoy it more.

This book was a hard read for me. I did not like the sensitive subject matter and the atmosphere did not work well for me at all.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this book. A full review will be posted on Amazon and Goodreads

Mystical predictions following traditions of the past play a great part in the life of Amrau Dar and her children. This debut novel is set at a time of great economic change for India and its people. The past and present meet each other in the community and latterly during partition.

I honestly found this really hard to finish. Even though the prose was easy to read and the descriptions of the city it's set in are beautiful, it was just very confusing. There are lots of cultural references that outsiders would not get, and there are abrupt changes in POV at times. Once I got to the middle, it got easier as we stuck with Awais Dar, but I still feel like there was more that the book wanted to tell me that I didn't get. Reading the other reviews on Netgalley tell me others feel the same way.

This isn’t my usual type of book. But it was good and I enjoyed it all the same. It was good to read and well written. It flowed well and was easy to read

Although this book is beautifully written I found it hard to follow. I did enjoy the story; it was fascinating and touched on things I hadn’t read before. It was well written overall with some absolutely stunning descriptions but I lost track at times and had to re-read.

I wanted to love this book. And there were aspects about it I did love...the rich descriptions. The unexplored parts of the first half of the 1900s, pivotal moments in India and Pakistan's history as they were partitioned by the British.

The characters are interesting, and the depth is fantastic...but something about the story remains unfulfilled. I'm not sure if its the characters' fates, or the lack of resolution as a whole on some of the storylines in any poignant way. The writing was good but the book didn't stand out to me, though descriptions of the cities and cultures did.

Where A People's History of Heaven offered a fun and fascinating window into an Indian slum and is a great success, The Inside City's attempt to do something similar is not successful. This novel, set mostly before Partition, follows a Muslim child who has been prophesied to do great things and his family, Unfortunately, the mother is devout to the point of lacking all common sense, the father is largely absent, and the sisters are non-entities. The child himself is a not very interesting, and his activities generally end in disappointment. The book had ideas with promise--the setting, the discovery of history and learning its role, along with superstition, in shaping the world, the book's long scope. But it's tedious and fails to live up to any of the initial ideas the author sets out.

I wanted to like this book as the setting was wonderful, but I found it hard to follow at times and thus it was hard for me to get into this book.

I would like to thank netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy free of charge. This is my honest and unbiased opinion of it.

Set in 1930’s Lahore, with the odd jump back to 1919, this is the story of Awais. A boy who survived influenza but was left a little sickly. But before his birth a Pir (holy man) told his mother Amrau, that he was destined for greatness and he would save a life…..Amrau was told to change her name to Khurshid…

His father Dar, wasn’t so sure.

But then Awais find the lost 13th gate of Lahore….is the prophecy coming true?

Don’t expect a simple tale, this is about life in turbulent times, about the love of family, political and brutal upheaval and ultimately hope. Beautiful language and imagery by Anita Mir….a treasure of writing and will stay with me for a long while……

Thank you to NetGalley, the author and publishers for a free copy of the ebook in exchange for my honest, unbiased review.

I read about 1/3 of this book but didn’t finish it, the changing narrative was quite tricky to follow and engage with. I loved the setting but I could not get into the story as it was quite confusing.

Thanks for giving me an opportunity to review this

This was good, not great. That this is her first book shows thru at times, but she is a talented author. Interesting historical aspects and an interesting, if unfocused, and sometime complex plot. I'm not into politics, but liked learning a little more about Indian culture. Maybe worth the risk to read this mixed bag of a book.

I really appreciate the ARC for review!!

Maybe this book just relies on a certain audience, of which I am not a part. The synopsis, while a little confusing, holds such promise that I certainly hope so. I, however, found the book confusing and difficult as it seems to rely on a lot of prior knowledge of the city Lahore, the Indian language and culture, and the events of and surrounding the Partition. While ordinarily some Googling would solve these issues, I found myself researching in every second sentence which interrupted the reading experience greatly. Once I did eventually get my head around it all, I found the storyline and characters really hard to follow.
But again, I can see the effort and love the author has put into this work, and I think there is a market that will devour this story. It's just not for me.

Ambitious and unusual. Although I was on occasion confused -- with a writing style that does not make concessions -- I found this easy to devour.

Political events -- Gandhi, Amritsar, partition -- are the backdrop for a story more about society perhaps, as seen in one family and the swirl of people around it. A mother who eats her young. Awais, who is too black, dreamy mapper of the Inside City of Lahore, avoids getting entirely eaten and helps his sister Maryam, a maths genius (I'd like to think she was named for Maryam Mirzakhani, 1977-2017, first woman to win the Fields Medal in mathematics). The plot does not indulge us with outcomes we'd desire, but at risk of a spoiler, I was highly glad that there IS an escape at the end.

Fascinating historical fiction.

This book looked interesting, but it was so hard to follow that I couldn't get invested in the characters or plot. The writing style made it hard to follow and invest in.