An often absorbing, if flawed, story of one woman finding a surprising new path in life.
An atmospheric novel in which a married woman has a gradual personal awakening.
Behera’s debut centers on Julia Varman, whom readers first meet when she’s happily married to “highflying businessman” Sachin. The revelation that Julia is infertile after a recent miscarriage disappoints them both; Sachin very much wants a son, but he seems unenthusiastic about the prospect of adopting a child even though the idea excites Julia. Behera broadens the story to recount the courtship between Sachin and Julia and goes on to introduce the cast of characters that fill out their respective families; the narrative also expands to introduce readers to a free-spirited young man named Vijay. His story—which is revealed as one of deprivation, desperation, and eventually even murder—is far more immediate than Julia’s, until the two narrative strands come together in an exciting climax. The elements of that climax and the violence that accumulates around Vijay’s plotline are counterbalanced with a chronicle of the souring love and growing disillusionment between Sachin and Julia. The author shows how the couple gradually and repeatedly encounter various ways that they are strangers to each other, so that even very late in the novel, when Sachin asks Julia when she started reading romance novels, she answers, “Between books of varied emotions I like hiding my own.”
Over the course of this novel, Behera tells a grand but sometimes pleasingly intimate story with care and a talent for pacing, and her realization of her three main characters deepens throughout the narrative. Vijay’s part in that story, at many points, feels more inherently dramatic than those of both Julia and her husband, but throughout, Behera maintains an effectively balanced approach that often favorably calls to mind the atmospherics of 19th-century novels. However, these positive qualities are frequently marred by prose that alternates between excessive ornateness (such as “Sachin stealthily entered with the cloak of his love and weapon of his concern to slay the beast of Julia's unhappiness”) and clichés—the phrases “got hitched,” “costs an arm and a leg,” and “they painted the town red” all happen on the same page, for example. Some sentences are both bloated and disjointed: “He was tempted and so grabbed the piggy bank, but just dallied with it because Mrs. Jadav came to call him down for a dinner of pizza, pasta, grilled chicken tacos, and pineapple meringue with children less hungry than him.” The author compensates for these weaknesses, though, by filling her novel with the sights and sounds of India, particularly in vivid descriptions of food. There’s a murder plot and other twists, and Vijay and his cast of supporting characters are always on hand to mitigate the less-interesting narrative of Julia’s life and keep it from excessively slowing the book that bears her name. That said, readers will easily be able to imagine a sleeker and stronger novel emerging from a rigorously edited version of this text.
An often absorbing, if flawed, story of one woman finding a surprising new path in life.Pub Date: March 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-578-38553-2
Page Count: 346
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.
A year in the life of the No. 2 boarding school in America—up from No. 19 last year!
Rumors of Hilderbrand’s retirement were greatly exaggerated, it turns out, since not only has she not gone out to pasture, she’s started over in high school, with her daughter Shelby Cunningham as co-author. As their delicious new book opens, it’s Move-In Day at Tiffin Academy, and Head of School Audre Robinson is warmly welcoming the returning and new students to the New England campus, the latter group including a rare midstream addition to the junior class. Brainiac Charley Hicks is transferring from public school in Maryland to a spot that opened up when one of the school’s most beloved students died by suicide the preceding year. She will be joining a large, diverse cast of adult and teenage characters—queen bees, jealous second-stringers, boozehounds young and old, secret lesbians, people chasing the wrong people chasing other wrong people—all of them royally screwed when an app called Zip Zap appears and starts blasting everyone’s secrets all over campus. How the heck…? Meanwhile, it seems so unlikely that Tiffin has jumped up to the No. 2 spot in the boarding-school rankings that a high-profile magazine launches an investigation, and even the head is worried that there may have been payola involved. The school has a reputation for being more social than academic, and this quality gets an exciting new exclamation point when the resident millionaire bad boy opens a high-style secret speakeasy for select juniors in a forgotten basement. It’s called Priorities. Exactly. One problem: Cinnamon Peters’ mysterious suicide hangs over the book in an odd way, especially since the note she left for her closest male friend is not to be opened for another year—and isn’t. This is surely a setup for a sequel, but it’s a bit frustrating here, and bobs sort of shallowly along amid the general high spirits.
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780316567855
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.
A dramatic, complex imagining of the origins of Stonehenge.
In about 2500 B.C.E. on the Great Plain, Seft and his family collect flints in a mine. He dislikes the work, and the motherless lad hates the abuse he gets from his father and brothers. He leaves them and arrives at a wooden monument where sacred events such as the Midsummer Rite take place. There are also circles of stones that help predict equinoxes, solstices, even eclipses. This is a world where the customary greeting is “May the Sun God smile on you,” and everyone is a year older on Midsummer Day. Except for a priestess or two, no one can count beyond fingers and toes—to indicate 30, they show both hands, point to both feet, then show both hands again. Casual sex is common, and sex between women is less common but not taboo. Joia, a young woman who becomes a priestess, wonders about her sexuality. After a fire destroys the Monument, she leads a bold effort to rebuild it in stone. To please the gods, they must haul 10 giant stones from distant Stony Valley. Of course neither machinery nor roads exist, so the difficulties are extraordinary. Although the project has its detractors, hundreds of able-bodied people are willing to help. Craftspeople known as cleverhands construct a sled and a road, and they make the rope to wrap around the stones. Many, many others pull. And pull. Meanwhile, the three principal groups—farmers, woodlanders, and herders—all have their separate interests. There is talk of war, which Joia has never seen in her lifetime. Soon it seems inevitable that the powerful farmers will not only start one but win it, unless heroes like Seft and Joia can come up with a creative plan. But there is also the matter of love for Joia in this well-plotted and well-told yarn. The story has a lot of characters from multiple tribes, and they can be hard to keep track of. A page in the front of the book listing who’s who would be helpful.
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781538772775
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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