Fault Lines was the April pick for the Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club.

After reading the synopsis, I really wasn’t sure if this book would be for me. The book follows Mizuki, a Japanese housewife and mother to 2 children, living in Tokyo. But with a husband consumed by work and a life revolving around the children, Mizuki feels stuck. She finds herself reflecting on how she got to this point in life and yearning for a freedom she can’t remember the last time she felt. Until she meets a handsome stranger who helps bring her back to life, only to realize she’s begun living two lives but can only really keep one.

This book is a great example of a character-driven novel done really well. Even though I don’t relate to our protagonist, Mizuki, in any way (I don’t live in Tokyo, I’m happily married and happily child-free), I found this book to be compulsively readable and blew through it. I appreciated Mizuki’s sarcastic sense of humour and getting to see and experience Tokyo with her as my guide. There was just something so human and intimate about her narration that kept me reading. She felt real and raw and I felt privileged to get to live inside her head for a while.