Publisher's Weekly Review
Nair's accomplished debut is a familial drama spanning multiple decades. Rakhee Singh has spent years avoiding memories of the transformative summer when she turned 11, but her betrothal forces her to realize she needs to acknowledge her past before she can move forward. "Keeping secrets had become second nature, an inheritance passed down from mother to daughter like an heirloom." As a young child in Minnesota, Rakhee senses her mother's unhappiness, and this feeling intensifies after a batch of mysterious letters arrives from India. Her mother's moods become unpredictable, culminating in the decision to visit her family in rural Kerala with Rakhee, leaving her husband behind. In India, Rakhee longs to explore the jungle surrounding the family's home, but is warned about a superstition prohibiting children from entering it. Rakhee disobeys and what she discovers there is a tangled web of deceit that will haunt her for years. Nair creates a satisfying coming-of-age tale with smooth prose and a lustrous backdrop. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
On the verge of marriage, Rakhee Singh must return to India to rectify childhood notions of marriage and love that were shattered during an adolescent summer spent in India. Just as Rakhee's adolescence was beginning, her Indian immigrant mother, facing deep depression and unhappiness in Minnesota, decided to bring her to India for the summer. There, Rakhee built strong friendships with her cousins, met her dying grandmother, and found her once-rich family struggling to stay afloat. She discovered as the summer unfolded that the financial hardship was deeply involved in her mother's affair with an old friend and with a mysterious garden deep in the forest behind the family home. What Rakhee discovered within the walls of the garden changed her life forever. A daring fairy tale of a story, Nair's first novel audaciously tackles issues ranging from puberty to friendship to abuse, providing plenty of adventure as well.--Hunt, Juli. Copyright 2010 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Debut author Nair has written a powerfully compelling coming-of-age story in which ten-year-old Rakhee discovers the family skeletons during a summer in India with her mother and her mother's relatives. With a realistic yet easily understood Indian accent, actress Anitha Gandhi (Law & Order: Criminal Intent) conveys in a calm, quiet, evocative reading the confusion of a child in a strange country with different mores and expectations, living with an unstable parent. Released simultaneously with the print volume, this audiobook holds the listener's attention and will appeal to fans of family drama, Indian fiction, and Frances Hodgson Burnett's Secret Garden. The CD edition includes a bonus PDF of the Varma family tree and an author interview. ["The unexpected twists and dark secrets lurking make it difficult for readers to put this engrossing story down," read the review of the Grand Central hc, LJ 6/1/11.-Ed.]-Laurie Selwyn, formerly with Grayson Cty. Law Lib., Sherman, TX (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
