A mature novel about love and marriage in modern India’s middle class.
In Mehrotra’s novel, a passionate affair with an old love transforms a writer’s marriage and life.
Though it started out well enough, Medha and Rishi’s arranged marriage has been less than satisfying. After being disappointed to find that her college crush, Nikhil, didn’t return her feelings, Medha married young and settled into a mundane life with Rishi, who seemed to take her for granted. She finds happiness writing fiction in her spare time between running their household in Delhi and caring for their son, Yash. As the years go by, she finds herself less and less physically attracted to Rishi, whom she resents for failing to understand how much her art means to her. Their marriage is strained even further when Rishi’s job with a computer company demands that the family leave India to relocate to Oman. While there, Medha completes her first novel; she’s thrilled when it finds a publisher and seems poised to be a big success. At a launch party, she’s shocked to be reunited with Nikhil, who’s now an advertising executive in an unfulfilling marriage of his own. There’s still a powerful connection between them. Certain she can no longer bear living in Oman, Medha returns to Delhi without Rishi, and they separate. Medha and Nikhil begin an affair, with their passionate lovemaking inciting an emotional awakening that transforms the way she views the world and her past relationships, including her parents’ troubled marriage. Meanwhile, Rishi, traumatized by Medha’s abandonment, begins to reflect on his own shortcomings as a husband; he vows to win her back. This exploration of compromises and challenges in marriage may resonate even with those foreign to the arranged-marriage custom. Mehrotra also offers a nuanced portrait of an adulterous affair: Medha and Rishi aren’t blameless in the disintegration of their marriage, and Nikhil isn’t a cad or a knight in shining armor. Though the novel focuses on Medha, several chapters are written from Rishi’s and Nikhil’s points of view, which helps illuminate the differences between Medha’s idea of herself and her marriage and the way the men perceive her. Rather than dramatizing the emotions, characters’ reflections and their internal attempts to sort out their own feelings tell much of the story, which may disappoint some readers. A light copy edit would help, too. Nonetheless, Medha is an engaging, introspective character, and the novel avoids the common clichés that often attend stories of adulterous love triangles.
A mature novel about love and marriage in modern India’s middle class.Pub Date: April 21, 2012
ISBN: 978-1468009002
Page Count: 346
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A powerfully strong romance for readers who like their love stories full of torment and passion.
Best friends confront feelings for each other when they take a honeymoon trip together.
Francesca Gardiner and George Saint James have always been best friends—just like Jo and Laurie from Little Women, which they both love. Frankie has a big, complicated family and George was the boy next door who’d moved in with his eccentric grandmother. Their friendship survived childhood, awkward teenage years, and living together as young adults without ever venturing into the romantic—well, except for one kiss, but they don’t talk about that. When Frankie gets engaged to an older professor named Nate, George isn’t happy and a huge fight ensues. Despite his misgivings, George shows up to be her best man, but Nate leaves Frankie right before the wedding with only a cryptic letter. Devastated, Frankie goes to a friend’s house to recuperate, but her honeymoon is already planned and paid for—so she decides to travel to Tofino, a picturesque town on the coast of Vancouver Island, with George taking Nate’s place. Frankie wants to fix her friendship with George, but now that they’re in a romantic suite in a beautiful location, things are more complicated than ever. She’d always thought a relationship would be a bad idea, but she’s slowly beginning to realize they’ll never be able to go back to being kids. Maybe the only way forward involves forging a new kind of relationship. Fortune, the author of romances like This Summer Will Be Different (2024), returns with another love story full of longing and intense angst. The many allusions to Little Women are charming, and Frankie is a delightfully headstrong, feisty character. She and George have explosive chemistry, and Fortune manages to make the “will-they-or-won’t-they” nature of their relationship feel like life-or-death stakes.
A powerfully strong romance for readers who like their love stories full of torment and passion.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9780593953242
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A cleverly titled, cozy SF romance that marks Thorne as a writer to watch.
After purchasing a dilapidated, century-old starship called the Destitute, Torian Razner discovers that the moss covering it is, in fact, a deeply sarcastic sentient computer with abandonment issues.
Torian’s sister, Celise, is dying. Determined to save her life by getting her to a distant planet with air she can breathe, Torian ignores her former captain Amelia Perrosk’s warning that it’s an impossible task (along with any romantic feelings she might have for Amelia). Using the only ionite bars she has to her name, Torian purchases an ancient, moss-covered alien starship that appears to be on its last legs, so to speak. She hardly expected the moss to be a sentient computer or for it to hold a century-old grudge against its former alien captain. Moss quickly proves itself to be acerbic, intelligent, and rightly angry after being having been left behind for 100 years by its former captain. The two form a reluctant and surprising alliance, Torian proving to Moss that not all captains are “dog-turd fungus,” and they both gradually evolve into the best versions of themselves, human or otherwise. It’s obvious from the early pages that Thorne has crafted a story tailored to fans of Becky Chambers’ Monk & Robot series and Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries. Falling somewhere between the two, this is a delightful mashup of romance, found family, and a touch of violence as Moss grapples with its feelings about its former captain and the unexpected kindness that Torian shows. Sweet without being overly saccharine, it’s a book for readers who want the adventure that comes with the vastness of outer space without its harsher realities.
A cleverly titled, cozy SF romance that marks Thorne as a writer to watch.Pub Date: July 7, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414144
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Bramble Books
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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