I really don't know where to start with my review for The Orchard because it is a "slow burn" read but I liked everything about it from the cover design, to the characters, the storyline, the slow build, the setting, even the layout of the chapters and subchapters were well constructed. It's a familiar coming of age dynamic delivered with it's own unique greatness. A nice blend of faith, friendship, love, culture, loss while exploring the lack of all of these as well. All done with a good balance a "slow burn" usually lacks, making this one of my new favorites. Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the free digital advance reader copy of this title. I will be picking up a physical copy soon to add to my bookshelf

Thank you to NetGalley And HarperCollins for gifting me an ARC of David Hopen’s novel, The Orchard.. In exchange I offer my unbiased review.

This book really appealed to me for several reasons; the comparison to A Secret History, an Orthodox Jewish main protagonist and the setting ( a Jewish modern orthodox community in South Florida). While I believe the author is easily familiar with both his narrator and locale, he describes both the world of Ari Eden and Zion Hills flawlessly, I don’t think he reached the sophistication and skills that Donna Tart possessed in A Secret History. Unfortunately for me this book was a slow burn. I had difficulty getting through large Talmudic discussions and even many of the Jewish philosophical thoughts were heavy and burdensome. I do have some background knowledge with Jewish studies, which should have made this an easier read, and I wonder how someone not familiar with all of the Jewish words, concepts, traditions and experiences will find this novel. The ending saved this book, but it was a bumpy ride getting there. This is a tricky book but I do hope it finds commercial success. I think bookclub’s will find plenty to talk about.

This is a compelling coming of age novel about identity. When Ari’s father’s promotion at work forces them to move from his devout Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn to a more modern version of this life in Florida, he experiences a seismic cultural shift around him. His sudden freedom leads him to new experiences with girls as well as freshly forged friendships. But his new life also causes him to question everything he has previously believed in. I especially loved the idea of a young adult actively questioning the choices that their parents have made for them in terms of philosophy and religion. This is a book about transformation and identity. Although it is being compared to The Secret History, I think this is a bit misleading as it really is very much its own, original novel and sometimes comparisons to other books can be distracting. Well written, Hopen is a writer who focuses on detail and dialogue.

Aryeh feels an outsider in his Brooklyn yeshiva; he is curious and seeks knowledge through literature. When he moves to Florida, he feels an outsider in his new co-ed academy. Here he meets classmates preparing for college acceptances, something for which he has had no preparation. In his new life he finds friends, among them a popular athlete who introduces him to an elite group. Ari follows into a world of competition, parties, drinking, drugs and girls. His principal influences are a rabbi who appreciates his potential and Evan, a charismatic, troubled member who becomes his chief competitor and sometime nemesis. Evan and Ari both seek the meaning of life and debate the existence of God, but when this search turns to mysticism, it becomes so destructive no one will ever be the same. David Hopen bases this coming-of-age novel on a Jewish tale of four rabbis entering an orchard and leaving with individual results. I know there is an audience for his novel; however, It was unclear and confusing at times for this reader.

Brilliant, heartbreaking, devastating. And yet also fun and mischievous. I often have difficulty relating to stories featuring high school kids, but their struggles were rendered so vividly and were just achingly real, I could see myself in Ari. Or him in me.

Well! This was promising, breathtaking, gripping and emotional! Such a riveting, moving, powerful, addictive coming of age story!

I don’t want to compare this book with the other novels! Especially with Secret History! Each stories may have some resemblances but they are both unique perspectives, approaches to the lives of young generations!

I could honestly say: I loved Aryeh Eden ( Ari) from the beginning. It reminded me of my quirky, rebellious, isolated, “I’m not from this universe” teenage self! I loved the way he breaks his walls and changes himself by surrounded with a bunch of popular also sad, broken friends.

Ari was living in a secluded, devout life in Jewish Brooklyn community. He never kissed a girl. He never put a drug in his mouth or he never tasted alcohol. He buried his head into his books, living in library, enjoying quietness and peace.

But his father’s promotion force them to move Florida which will change his entire life pattern and his shy, quiet characteristics because he doesn’t just move into a new city, new school environment with rich, cool, popular, mischievous teenagers, he just moved to the entire different planet! He finds his freedom, experiencing new things, posh, fast, luxurious cars, girls, parties, risk taker, reckless friends!

He becomes part of a group with the help of golden boy Noah and he finds himself in a rivalry between he and Evan who is walking at the dangerous path and dragging everyone with him. He’s carrying a compelling burden on his shoulders which slowly diminishes his life energy.

For being part of the group, Ari also gets stuck at this dangerous path, estranging his family. The complex rivalry between he and Evan also gets the attention of Rabbi who runs the school.

I enjoyed the realistic characterization and detailed, well-researched, objective approach to the life in Jewish community. This is genuine self-discovery story of a young man’s questioning the morals, learning the facts of life by getting out of his protective cocoon and walking at the edge of the cliff. It’s about friendship, trust, risks, culture, wisdom.

Rabbi Bloom’s philosophical lessons were intense and a little confusing and complex for me. Some Hebrew phrases, discussions took so much of my mental energy to understand most parts correctly( I have to admit I was mostly lost in thoughts) but overall the storyline about the young man’s evolving life, relations with his peers, adjusting to new environment, dysfunctional family dynamics stole my heart and gripped my attention from the beginning.

My final decision: this is one of my best and illuminating fiction readings of the year.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Harper Collins Publishers / Ecco for sharing this unique arc with me in exchange my honest opinions.

Thanks to HarperCollins Publishers and NetGalley for providing an advanced copy of this book!

I'm really glad I got to read the first outing of a new author and I'm not disappointed at all. That's not to say the book doesn't have it's flaws, it does, but it's very clear David Hopen has a strong literary voice and had something he wanted to share.

The following is more or less a mish-mash of things I enjoyed and things I didn't. There's no clear outline here so bare with me.

I really enjoyed the start-up friendliness with our main character's new found "friends". It feels really believable in that he's still a fish out of water around them all but slowly getting a grasp on things. By the time the climax is reached, it really does feel like they had become best friends and were eager to hang out and chill with one another, among lots of drinking and culminating into some surprise drug use.

The last 100 pages or so brought upon a pretty melancholic tone which felt pretty gut wrenching at times, even eliciting some of that panicky, heavy breathing I experienced during my read of 'A Little Life'. Not too much of it but it is pretty emotional. And not to say they are comparable, they're absolutely not, but David Hopen knows how to hit those emotional beats and really make them count.

It felt a bit inconsistent with what our main character knows about and doesn't. At the beginning he comes across as sheltered and a smarty-pants "good" son, but then he recognizes what Instagram is, acknowledges an area "big enough for beer pong", and thinks about admitting to Sophia that he searched for her on Facebook. He does later admit to "testing the waters" of his faith by exploring different things before the story starts but I still didn't buy it completely.

I didn't really enjoy the "opposites" dynamic of Aryeh's father and mother. His father is extremely devout to his faith and wants his son to focus on his religious studies while his mom at every opportunity wants the opposite. ie. the principal of the school gives our main character a book on poetry which the father is "outraged" by because he doesn't know why the principal of a school would provide a text revolved around 'secular studies'. Yet the mom says "...I think it's wonderful he's worldly enough to be teaching things like poetry." The dynamic feels cliche but does start to lighten up a bit as out main character begins to, for lack of better wording, act out not just against his parents but against his faith.

There's a thing that happens late in the book that is brought to Aryeh's attention for him to potentially do. He rightfully refuses. Only a couple of pages later his love interest asks him to do it and he just says "sure". I found this frustrating in that he was so adamant about his decision but then his "lover" sticks him with it and he turns into a wet noodle. Aryeh's morals are all over the place which is believable in many points throughout the book, but this is just idiotic. Luckily he does have internal debate over it soon after and reverts back to his starting position, but all of this "drama" could have been saved if he just said no all the way through. Though honestly without this conflict the last part of the book wouldn't have the weight and impact it did so maybe it's accurate depiction is what made me frustrated.

Something that A LOT of people have mentioned as a detractor is the consistent "waxing poetic/philosophy" that has to take up somewhere between 50-100 pages of the text. Some of it is pretty engaging but other sections feel like the author is stretching his legs to show off his knowledge on philosophy. It's entirely possible some of it went over my head but a lot of it ultimately didn't help advance the plot so it just felt bloated in that regard. Though I did find it enjoyable to hear about Judaism and just how much it entails.

All of this to say that I will absolutely read what David Hopen writes next. His clear, concise voice and strong literary prowess make me excited for it. And I will absolutely make sure to purchase a copy once it's released to the public!

4-stars rounded up to 4.5 stars!

I'm a big fan of dark academia in general, and as a Jew, I loved seeing a book that centered Orthodox Jewish life. The characters were alluring, but I'll admit I had trouble finishing--I kept putting the book aside, perhaps because the slow burn suspense left me unsure where the book was heading or what "promises" it was trying to make me.

First, I’d like to thank NetGalley and Ecco Books for deeming me worthy of an advanced copy of this book. In David Hopen’s debut novel The Orchard, Ari Eden finds himself moving from an extremely observant Orthodox community in Brooklyn to a more modern Orthodox world in Florida. Ari quickly makes friends with his new school’s popular crowd, realizes yeshiva did not teach him much, and learns what it feels like to be touched by a woman other than his mother. As he further embeds himself into this new group of friends, Ari stretches himself intellectually with his classmate Evan, who takes on some rather extreme and literal views of legends. This includes the legend of Pardes (the book’s namesake). This coming of age story is beautifully told and dives deeply into the struggle of what it means to feel alone and the search for one’s own self.

Here’s my take: I have been excited about this book ever since I first read about it, so you can only imagine my delight when NetGalley notified me that I was approved for the eARC. Immediately, I felt drawn into this story and the characters, especially Ari. The story offers a TON of dialogue, and I loved every second of it. I feel like that isn’t something we see in a ton of novels, but I felt like I understood Ari more through being privy to his conversations. The foreshadowing in this book grips you but doesn’t prepare you for the outcome, especially if you’re as obsessed with the characters as I am. I am a huge fan of a book with a journey, and The Orchard did not disappoint. I could not for the life of me put it down.

Slight disclaimer: There’s a lot of Yiddish and Hebrew phrases at the beginning before Ari leaves Brooklyn and some scattered through the rest of the book. Most of the time, they’re either defined outright or with context clues, but you might want your phone handy to google some words. Also, PLEASE do not let this deter you from reading this book. The story is so so good.

This book is out on November 17th! I can’t wait to get my hands on a physical copy, and I can’t wait to see what Hopen does next!

Wow, not what I expected when you start out and finish! It starts with a character Ari, Brooklyn, NY , religious teenager, yarmulka, black and white clothes, following all the Jewish rules. Senior year his parents move to Zion Hills, Florida. Their neighborhood are wealthy Jews living in a modern quasi secular existence.

The families meet and imagine a religious Jewish teenager mixing with a bunch or rich Jewish teenagers, yet going to a Jewish high school. I figured that is the story. How Ari manages to fit in with Amir, a true and trusted friend to all, Evan,the neighbor, a brilliant competitor, and Noah, the popular basketball star. Then of course there are the girls. I expected the story to be a cross of drinking, smoking, and sex. But, while this happens, there is far more going on in this story. First, the new high school is not the Brooklyn yeshiva. Jewish, yes, but no yarmulkes a more modern orthodoxy.

Ari, the man character goes thru a storm of changes. Dating, found him naive, sincere thoughtful. But, he goes thru transformation and does all the things he should not, including violating Shabbat, not keeping kosher and more.

But, the story becomes more , a heavy dose of religious meaning. Discussions of God and the meaning of existence, even discussions in school are rather philosophical. The emotional acceptance of being alone,, suffering and sadness. There are many Jewish words that for me were not given definition. As the story moves on the characters have extreme behaviors which end in unexpected outcomes.

Therefore the story has some twists and turns that are unexpected and therefore caused me to read on.
I recommend this book if you want to read about the discussion of behavior as it relates to .jewish religion and God and the transformation of an orthodox Jewish teenager.

“The Orchard,” by David Hopen is a long-winded, complex, incomprehensible allegorical coming of age story. In this book, Ari Eden, an Orthodox Jewish high school boy moves from his traditional Orthodox Jewish school in Brooklyn to a modern wealthy Orthodox private school in Miami, where he falls in with a popular crowd that drinks and takes drugs.

At the center of the novel is a parable told to Ari and his friends by the school’s head rabbi about four sages that seek God in a paradisiacal orchard of Torah knowledge. Only one comes out unscathed. Ari’s friends apparently represent these four sages in one form or another, but by the time this became apparent my mind was numb from reading this lengthy book, and I was too glad that it was over to ponder the significance of the events that happened at the end of the book.

The book details the daily lives of Ari and his new friends, including their excessive partying, drug use and alcohol consumption. In between, there are meetings with the head Rabbi where esoteric, and fairly incomprehensible Torah and Talmud lessons are discussed.

The book was rambling and complicated, and hence torturous to read. I wanted to quit at the 16% point, but persevered out of a feeling of obligation to provide a review for the ARC copy I received from NetGalley. On the plus side, the male characters were well developed, if not very likable. (The females all seemed to speak in the same voice—brash and outspoken, bordering on rude and insulting). In sum, the time that it took to read this long-winded book was not worth the effort.

This is a story of a young man who is at odds between his restricted childhood and his religion and a new culture of the “modern world”. Not being familiar with Judaism, I had a difficult time understanding much of the language and found myself looking up words online to know what Ari was talking about. Other than that, I thought it was very good.

Hopen's debut is a welcome take on a classic coming of age story. Ari Eden and his parents leave their Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn and move to a wealthy community in Florida. Excited by the chance to start fresh, Ari immediately meets his enigmatic neighbor Noah at a pool party and is introduced into his popular and intense group of friends. Hopen is talented in setting the scene and connecting the story to religious and moral thought.

As this coming-of-age story begins, Aryeh Eden is a 17 year-old living in Williamsburg, an Orthodox neighborhood in Brooklyn, with his parents, attending a rundown school and spending his days and nights with either his family or his friends either studying, or observing religious rites and rules. He appears to be neither unhappy nor happy, merely following an uneventful life that was prescribed for him without giving much thought to any alternative. Even with his friends, he seems to be emotionally isolated, living apart from the life that exists outside of this neighborhood. He never seems to give much thought to his future, until one day he is forced to consider living somewhere else.

When Ari’s father seeks new employment, his parents are concerned about taking him out of the environment where he has lived his life thus far, and moving to a less strict Orthodox neighborhood near Miami called Zion Hills, in Florida. A more worldly neighborhood that bears no resemblance to his Williamsburg neighborhood, a neighborhood that to most appears more glamorous, and is certainly more affluent, although once they move there, they live in a much smaller, less expensive home than their neighbors. Still, it is at least twice the size of their old apartment in Brooklyn, and offers Ari more privacy.

He is invited to his neighbor’s pool party almost immediately after moving in, a boy his age – both will be entering their senior year in high school at the same Jewish Academy very soon – a boy who is popular among the popular students, who also happen to be atypically well-read, smart students, but they are also students who enjoy partying perhaps a bit too much. Since they include the basketball players as well as some of the best students, and they know how to contrive and maneuver a story, what trouble they’ve been in up until now has been relatively underplayed. When he arrives at this party, he is both a bit overwhelmed by the absence of yarmulkes, as well as the lack of some protocols he considers standards of living according to how he was raised. At the same time as he feels overwhelmed, perhaps unnerved by these changes, there is also a sense of exhilaration of the freedom he senses, as well. A change in location, for him, brings about new prospects – some of which he fears, but on another level years for. Once school begins, unlike his old school where most of his classmates flirted with illiteracy, he may no longer stand out as one of the smarter students, as he is not only behind in some areas, but among his new classmates he doesn’t stand out quite as starkly in a sea of well-read students who have been raised to strive for elite colleges, and lucrative careers seemingly since birth. What Ari does have that separates him, for me, was a choice to better himself, his future, and his life. It is a choice that he seems to struggle with periodically, with somewhat typical teenage angst, but there is more to him, more to his struggle than that.

This has been likened to The Secret History by Donna Tartt, which I haven’t read, so I can’t say. There is an element of this that reminded me a bit of Dead Poets Society, the bond that grows between a group of young boys-on-the-verge-of-manhood, a secretive ‘society’ in its own way. What I can say is that I found this to be a mesmerizing story, the kind where you almost want to look away once in a while, but can’t bring yourself to close your eyes or turn away.

Mesmerizing, spellbinding, immersive, beautifully written, thoroughly engaging debut novel that is shared in such an intimate style it makes these people, their experiences and these places come alive. To say that I was impressed seems vastly inadequate.


Pub Date: 17 November 2020

Many thanks for the ARC provided by HarperCollins Publishers / Ecco

#TheOrchard #NetGalley

With so many layers, including a coming of age aspect, serious questions of philosophy and religion, a love story, and more, this book challenges and engages the reader from the first page. While there is an overarching sadness to the story, ultimately hope shines through at the end. Compelling characters that touch you and cause you to be fully invested in their stories round out this intense, thought provoking novel.

Thank you Harper Collins and Netgalley for the copy in response for an honest review.

Equal parts literary fiction, bildungsroman, thriller, and philosophical religious questioning, The Orchard is based on a Jewish legend of four rabbis who enter “Pardes.” The Orchard follows Aryeh Eden as he moves from the frum Orthodox Jewish Brooklyn community to the less strict Modern Orthodox community in Miami (although the community felt much more Reform or Conservative to me and not Modern Orthodox). There Aryeh befriends a group of boys, falls for Sophia, and has religious tutoring from Rabbi Bloom. All of these plots are intertwined and catalysts for different events.

I have very mixed feelings on the Orchard, but ultimately it won me over. I was immediately grabbed by the book, and Hopin is excellent at both setting a stage and building and maintaining tension. The book is incredibly atmospheric. The eventual release of tension was satisfying and unexpected.I liked the unique choice and interpretation of the source material. Evan was the most interesting character, and his grappling with religious questions were the most successful part of the book for me. There are actual interesting religious questions asked in the book, and I loved seeing this integral aspect of Judaism represented in fiction.

I did however have some major issues with the book, which led me to almost stop reading it. Hopin has an intense attention to detail, when employed well it clearly sets the scene, however, it often feels misplaced, distracting, and unbelievable. The dialogue, especially with teachers, was cliche. The characters, especially the women, felt underdeveloped; while reading them I often pictured them with black holes instead of eyes. The book felt too long, there were plot points that could have been entirely omitted (looking at you basketball scenes), and from 20% through 40% the book was repetitive and redundant (party, mope, repeat). The second half of the book ended up redeeming it for me, as the plot and religious philosophical questioning picked up and led to a very satisfying book ending.

I would definitely recommend this book for fans of moody teenage television shows such as Riverdale, or those who enjoy religious philosophical questions.

A well-written book by a young author who seems to really know his topic well. Ari is a high school senior who has left the Orthodox community of New York to join a more liberal/modern Orthodox community in Florida due to his father's job situation. The family moves into the cheapest home in a rich enclave and Ari starts school after being befriended by the very popular boy across the street. For some reason, the smart popular and fast crowd at the school embraces him and we seem him go through the school year being influenced by this clique as he gives up his staid clothing, prayer habits, synagogue attendance, Jewish studies and instead goes with girls, drugs and booze. As a parent you have to wonder at how oblivious his parents are to these changes and why things go so far, but for the sake of the story, it works. The book is filled with intellectual discussion both Jewish and secular and readers may find this fascinating. Hopen appears to know his stuff and it begs the question of how much of this is autobiographical.
All in all it is an engrossing book that should get starred reviews and much attention when it is published. I'm grateful to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book.