A beautiful, heartbreaking story about family, generational trauma, and the ways we are molded by those that came before us.

The story starts out, first, as a young woman telling her wife there are things about her family she must share, now that she is finally ready. I love the storytelling quality of it and how it is introduced. You are reminded, through the parts of each section, that this is a story being shared to help the other understand and make an informed decision. One is sharing a secret.

I loved the idea of this tapestry - one that portrays all the women of the family that came before. I loved the ways they were connected, learning of their struggles and loves, and how they changed those that knew the stories. The idea that the current holder could experience these memories was both touching and fascinating. What would that be like? To not only know the story, but truly know and understand your mother and grandmother? It's a compelling story, one that kept me wondering how it would all come together. I knew little of the Partition and was shocking and heartbroken to learn the stories. The writing was gorgeous, the story just flowed, and I found myself completed swept away with this one. I loved it!

A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.

I’m blown away by the insight into mother/daughter relationships and family dynamics that this author has in her first novel. By setting her story mainly in India in the late 1940s during Partition, she’s able to explore the meaning of home and family, freedom of choice, friendship and love. This is an exquisitely written book about the strength of women gathered from each preceding generation.

Thanks to NetGalley and Viking Press for the ARC to read and review.

This is a beautiful multi-generational story that follows a lineage of women from pre-partition India through to 21st century New York. I found that the many storylines were deftly woven together in a way that was complex thematically but easy to follow structurally and plot-wise. While I felt that the story took a while to get started and perhaps too much time was spent in Amla's early childhood years, overall the pacing and plotting was strong and I was gripped throughout. The themes of ancestral memory and shared trauma were developed in a fascinating way with the magical realism elements, and I loved how we saw these overarching political movements through the eyes of ordinary women living through them. I also appreciated the way the story expressed queer joy and queer family in a subtly beautiful way. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys multi-generational stories or books about women's perspectives on living through tumultuous political circumstances.

A complicated, lush story that was easy to follow yet hard to put down. Spanning generations of women, this novel makes you wonder: how much of my life is born in me and how much do I choose? Lots of sub themes here like LGBTG+ and Partition era history made the book even more interesting. Recommend!!

Thanks to Viking for gifted access via Netgalley. All opinions below are my own.

Amla begins as a child in Karachi and we see how she is torn from her best friend during the Partition. She suffers trauma after trauma despite having this amazing gift to influence the world around her. She views the gift as a curse and fears passing it on to her own daughter. We see how that impacts her life, her daughters' lives and now her granddaughter's. The story is being told by the granddaughter who carries the weight of these lives as she decides whether to have a child of her own.

I loved the depth of this story and the multigenerational exploration of Indian history.  I was so invested in Amla and Arni's stories. The balance of personal details with the larger political issues was well done. The only criticism I have of this one is that I felt the ending was a little weak, I wanted a little more from the narrator's story but that ultimately felt rushed. This is still a powerful historical fiction read with a little magical realism dashed in.

Read this one if you liked The Covenant of Water or The Museum of Failures.

Thank you netgalley for this arc in exchange for my review. This is a powerful story of family through generations. It is a little sci fi because the girls have a tapestry that they are sewn into and from there they are connected to their ancestors. They can see their memories. Even more intense they can paint to change the future which does not work out well fir everyone. It is quite the journey and story. Well done four stars

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Viking for providing me with an ARC copy of A Thousand Times Before.

I really loved the concept of A Thousand Times Before, following generations of women who are connected by a tapestry that allows them to inherit the experiences of the women that came before them. The story is told by Ayukta, to her wife, Nadya, and spans Partition-era India to modern-day Brooklyn.

The historical fiction aspect of the story was the biggest draw for me. I always love reading multi-generational stories about women, who are faced with hardships in their family and within the social confines of their social/government structure, and seeing how they deal with or overcome those hardships.. I also thought the magical realism storyline of the tapestry was an intriguing idea.

For me, the book fell flat because of the narrators voice. I felt like I was just being told everything by Ayukta, and didn’t feel an emotional connection to the story. I found it to be a very slow read and skimmed through chapters, because I was losing interest in following the stories.

Even though A Thousand Years Before had some issues for me, I would still recommend it for readers who love historical fiction, magical realism, and multi-generational stories.

DNF @20%

This is a good story. I'm just not currently in the mood for the way that it's written and it's hindering me from appreciating the story more..

I really love the concept of generations of of women's stories being told through the tapestry. At the beginning, the author did a great job of introducing this and diving into each woman. I think that the book was written very well and it was a pleasant reading experience. I just didn't feel myself connecting to the characters, and at times becoming confused between them. The middle part of the book was difficult to follow for me but it started and ended clearly. it was alright for me, but still want to give a shoutout to the author on their writing skills!

Married to Nadya, Ayukta has been unable to agree to have children because she has been hiding knowledge of her gift from her wife. But the time has come to be forthcoming and Ayukta recounts in great detail the lives of the two generations of women who have come before her. The book begins with Ayukta's grandmother, Amla, a Hindu born in Karachi before Partition, and moves forward to Arni, her mother, who grew up in India during the 1970s student protests. The gift each woman in this lineage has inherited enables them to be "accompanied" by those women who've come before and also enables them, through their art, to either predict or portend a future event.

Each woman's likeness is stitched onto a tapestry by her mother, which triggers the onset of the gift. The histories recounted show both the promise and danger of the gift as Ayukta tries to explain to Nadya why she has been reluctant to continue this legacy.

Beautifully written with well-researched historical details, this book weaves together significant eras of history with a mystically-inspired and very feminist story. It is rather long but never dull and is highly recommended.

Thank you to the publisher for the ARC via NetGalley.

I wanted to love this book. I loved the premise, but I wanted more magic based on the description of this tapestry that can be used to change the lives of those who are sewn onto it. Even though this book wasn't a favorite, the author has a lot of promise. Her writing is evocative and the characters are richly developed. I felt immersed in the story (after looking up many of the Indian words on Google).

Thank you to NetGalley for my first ARC.

Thank you NetGalley & Viking Books for letting me read this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I thought the premise of the book about an ancestral lineage found in a living tapestry was so interesting. The female characters of this book are able to access and pass down message of their maternal line with all the good and bad that comes with it.

While the book is written well, for me personally, I struggled to emotionally connect with the characters. I had a challenging time tracking the different personalities as they went back and forth in time. I felt the book could have used some editing. The beginning and the ending captained my attention but I fear I was a little lost in the middle, unfortunately.

This book had an interesting premise and I enjoyed the history. However, overall it was too superficial. I wanted more about the history, more details about the characters. I felt a distinct wall between the story and me so that I was never fully engaged. Sorry, Burt this was a fail for me.

This was an interesting and compelling story, with beautiful writing and engaging characters.
I'll admit I was a little hesitant at first with all the magical realism part, but it didn't bother me.
I wanted a more realistic touch, for sure. But I didn't mind the fantasy aspect of this story.

This was a truly engaging story about a mother's resilience to save her family & generations to come. Ayukta is a great narrator, who kept me captivated with every chapter.

I enjoyed "A Thousand Times Before" so much. It was such an interesting read that weaves the thoughts of daughters and those who come before them. As a debut, this is astounding and I can't wait to read more by this author.

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

A Thousand Times Before by Asha Thanki is a mixed first and third person multi-POV Queer speculative historical set around the Partition of India and Pakistan. Amla is a child when talk of the Partition starts gaining ground, leading her to wonder where she will live given that her father is Sindhi and her mother is Gujarati. When her mother is killed during a train attack, Amla comes into possession of a tapestry passed down to the women in her family that grants subtle, but potentially disastrous powers to whoever’s image is sewn into it along with the memories of all the women who came before.

The framing device of Amla’s granddaughter, Ayukta, explaining her family history to her wife, Nadya, was well-executed and served to heighten the emotional elements and strengthen the themes. Ayukta is connected to Amla through more than just being granddaughter and grandmother; both women are Queer but living different lives because of the differing political climates over the decades. Amla’s childhood best friend, Fiza, is Amla’s first love and you can feel her longing every time Fiza is mentioned.

I knew a little bit about the Partition of Hindustan before reading this, but was largely unaware of some of the more personal parts, such as where mixed families would go and if they would be ripped apart. Amla's father decides to move them to Gujarat after Amla’s mother’s death and it seems to be the right decision as political turmoil continued in the town they left behind, but that didn't mean things would be smooth sailing for them.

Thematically, the story is strongly about the line of mothers and daughters in one family and how their shared memories guide and strengthen them. Ayukta is not simply recounting an oral story passed down; in a way, she's lived parts of Amla’s life and later lived her own mother's, Arni. The weight of this holds Ayukta back from having children with her wife despite her wife’s desire for a child. If Ayukta doesn't pass the tapestry on, generations of memories would be lost and the good their family’s powers can do would cease to exist, but it's also a heavy burden to ask someone to carry the trauma and heartbreak of so many.

Content warning for mentions of SA and brief depictions of domestic abuse

I would recommend this to fans of historical fiction with a speculative touch, readers who prefer stories about intergenerational trauma, and those looking for books taking place around Partition

I loved the storytelling in this book. The historical account of Amla and Arni’s lives was engaging and I enjoyed those aspects of the book.
However, our narrator - Ayukta - was less compelling in my opinion. Every time the story shifted to her speaking to Nadya in the present day, I was not as interested.

Overall, I’m willing to accept it was a ME problem and not necessarily the writing that was bugging my about Ayukta because I loved so many other things about this book. I would definitely recommend to anyone who enjoys a good family saga.

Thank you to NetGalley and Viking Penguin for this digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thanks for the review copy. I think it would be interesting to access the memories of my mother and generations before her. This book is lovely.

Thank you to Viking, Netgalley and Asha Thanki for an ARC of this book.

This book is a gut punch. For a debut, it is impressively skilfully written and crafted.

This is a book about how society shapes women, and how women shape other women in turn. It's about mothers and daughters, and the love and damage that can mark them and their relationships. It will make you think about yourself, your own place in the world and your own relationship with your mother.