RED, WHITE, AND WHOLE

With her slow pace and serious tone, narrator Priya Ayyar brings reverence to this heartbreaking novel in verse, which takes place in 1983. Caught between Indian family traditions and her social life, the only Indian-American eighth grader at her school, Reha, struggles to find where she belongs. When her mother suddenly gets sick with leukemia, Reha's social concerns are replaced by her desperate wish to save her mother's life. Ayyar's somber tone never changes, but listeners will empathize with Reha's anxiety. While Ayyar gives Reha an American accent, she has no trouble pronouncing the Hindi words peppered throughout the audiobook. S.C. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine [Published: APRIL 2021]