naomiysl's profile picture

naomiysl 's review for:

A Bit of Earth by Karuna Riazi
3.0
adventurous emotional mysterious reflective slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: No

A Secret Garden, but make it American Desi. On the whole, this is a good thing to have on the shelves to hand people looking for the Secret Garden. It's not racist, it's not ablest, it's an inoffensive reworking of the story. And now the downsides: There are seemingly randomly interspersed bits of free verse that really break up the narrative in an unhelpful way, and don't seem to really serve a purpose. And though it's a completely serviceable reworking, it also adds very little of note. It also lacks the mysterious baby goth atmosphere of the original. So on the whole, it's fine. Not brilliant, but serves a purpose.