Review by Booklist Review
Babur Singh, an immigrant from India, moved to upscale Kitchewan for a promising future for his young daughter. Babur's wife leaves when Angela is six years old, and his reaction is to codify their lives into a series of routines designed to give Angela the best opportunities in life. Swimming becomes part of that routine, and it's why Angela, now a teenager, is at high school when Henry McCleary, her best friend's older brother, is stabbed on the football field. A terrified Angela stumbles across the scene and calls 911, and initial reports indicate that Chiara Thompkins, a young Black woman who fled an abusive household to live with her cousin, was behind the stabbing. But Chiara has disappeared, and control of the story belongs to Henry, his friend Chris, and Henry's parents, whose main focus is their son's reputation. As the investigation progresses, divisions arise in the community, with Angela stuck in the middle. Jain ably navigates between multiple points of view, sharing a variety of perspectives on the events and their aftermath to present a portrait of wealthy suburbia at its most toxic and insular. This moving, thought-provoking debut will be a hit with book clubs, and fans of Celeste Ng should take note.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Jain's riveting debut centers on a stabbing at a high school in affluent Westchester County, N.Y. While on the way to swimming practice, sophomore Angela Singh discovers her crush, Henry McCleary, collapsed and bleeding. After realizing he's been stabbed, she calls 911. As the story unfolds from various characters' points of view, the question is not who stabbed Henry, but why. Students, though, are quick to vilify Henry's assailant, Chiara Thomkins, a Black girl enrolled at the school who's been squatting on campus. As Henry, who is white, recuperates in the hospital, Chiara goes missing, and the McClearys' lawyer disparages Chiara for having used her cousin's address to attend the school. Henry, meanwhile, hides the fact that he and his friend Chris met Chiara to buy weed from her, and that Chris mocked her for being "homeless," held her down, and went through her bag. Also in the mix is Angela's father, Babur, an Uber driver and immigrant from India who has built up a fleet of cars to afford living in the school district for Angela's benefit, and who worries Angela's role in the affair will hurt her future. Jain excels at revealing each character's motivations and fears, and at how easily the truth can be distorted. This page-turner will stay with readers. Agent: Alexa Stark, Trident Media Group. (Mar.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Coming-of-age drama meets suburban thriller in a debut novel driven by the question: What happens when people's best intentions threaten to cause more harm than good? Angela Singh wrestles with the typical teenage travails: worrying over the distance growing between her and her best friend, Sam McCleary; managing an unrequited crush on Sam's brother, Henry; training to stay competitive on the swim team; and navigating an often fraught relationship with her single dad, who's been raising her on his own since she was 6. However, her world is turned upside down when, walking home from swim practice one day, she finds Henry on the football field, having been stabbed in the abdomen. The affluent town of Kitchewan, New York, becomes enmeshed in a web of social politics, gossip, and backroom power plays as everyone attempts to defend their innocence. Or perhaps the incident merely uncovers the racial and economic tensions that always existed in the town, especially as Chiara Thompkins, a Black teenager, emerges at the center of the drama. Angela, whose memory of finding Henry remains blurry, must navigate her torn loyalties to her family and friends, self-preservation, and her sense of justice as she grows more deeply entangled in the community's investigation into what exactly happened that day at the school. Rotating among multiple perspectives and moving backward and forward in time, the novel intertwines teenage drama with an incisive intersectional exploration of the complexities of intergenerational immigrant families, class, and racism. Jain tackles the novel's themes effectively and subtly for the most part, especially in the beginning. The final chapters seem rushed, diluting the complexity and drama that made the first two-thirds so riveting and resulting in a too-tidy ending. A powerful, story-driven exploration of some of today's most pressing social issues. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
