A comic, potentially multicultural romance conflates India’s many identities into a misleading package for easy consumption.
A down-on-her-luck Indian American human resources professional locks horns with an Indian American corporate downsizer while also trying to find a suitable bridegroom.
Layla Patel returns to San Francisco after undergoing a public breakup with her social media–star boyfriend and getting fired from her job in New York. She's immediately plunged into a chaotic life with her extended clan while she tries to start her own HR firm. At the same time she's helping her family’s restaurant stay afloat after her father has a health crisis, she has another item to tackle: evaluating the potential grooms he had selected for her from a matrimony website. To complicate matters further, Sam Mehta, an uptight corporate executive, has rented the space above the restaurant and refuses to give up his lease. Desai, who has previously published as Sarah Castille, now mixes up ingredients for a South Asian rom-com khichdi, with meddling aunties, a mishmash of Indian foods, references to movie songs, and a string of marriage candidates. Layla and Sam’s chemistry channels the drama of Indian cinema. There are many humorous moments of banter and slapstick between them and a notable attempt to immerse the reader in South Asian Americanness. But the novel shows a poor understanding of the sociopolitical dynamics within Indian communities (including in the diaspora). Desai seems unaware that names signal a person's region and religion, so there are seemingly northwest Indian characters specializing in southern Indian vegetarian food, which sidelines their own staple cuisine. Similarly, Layla's marriage candidates span a pan-Indian, pan-religious roster, a misleading representation of the reality of religious biases that impact Indian minorities. A subplot about domestic violence also teeters on the edge of representing people with disabilities as supporting characters who only serve to shape others’ stories.
A comic, potentially multicultural romance conflates India’s many identities into a misleading package for easy consumption.Pub Date: June 9, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-10056-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
