Seventeen year old plant-loving, flower crown wearing, perfume making Ridhi Kapadia can’t believe it when her once friend, now estranged popular cousin Nilesh Batra has to come stay with her and her family. Nilesh who is still reeling from discovering his perfect family isn’t so perfect when he finds out his Father is having an affair, is now also suspended from school. But when a pretty Yakshini named Kamini introduces herself to Nilesh and Rhidi makes a bargain with Sulochana, a courtly Yakshini who offers Ridhi a chance to get everything she’s ever wanted… to be a Yakshini herself, Nilesh and Ridhi quickly learn everything is not what it seems. Thrust into a world of Hindu and Buddhist folklore come to life the two cousins must work together and find a way to save themselves and then forest they’ve both come to love.


The flowery, whimsical language in this book sets the atmosphere and setting so well for our characters. The way Thakrar writes about the trees and flowers, down to the beautiful clothes and world the Yakshini’s live in is so beautiful. I enjoyed how nature feels like it’s its own character in this story. This story is split into two perspectives: that of Ridhi and that of Nilesh. Personally, I loved getting to follow Ridhi around. She is a nature loving, perfume making girl after my own heart. I loved watching her grow from this shy girl who finds it hard to fit in: to this unafraid, confident character who finds her place in the world through her connection with nature. The relationship Ridhi has with nature is admirable and I wish more than anything I could talk to the trees like Ridhi. I also loved the relationship she has with her family. It was so wholesome and warm. I really enjoyed seeing that in the story. The LGBTQ+ and disability representation in this story was a really nice addition as well. It never felt like the author was just throwing it in there to say “Oh I include representation of marginalized groups in my books.” It felt natural and flowed nicely in the writing and story overall.


While I did enjoy this story overall I do have some things that missed the mark for me. For starters, While I loved reading Ridhi’s perspective, I did not feel the same about Nilesh’s. All he did was create unnecessary problems because all he could think about was how “hot” Kamini was. And if he wasn’t thinking about Kamini he was being exceptionally rude to Ridhi for no reason other than he just thought picking on her was funny. Bouncing off the interactions between Ridhi and Nilesh…I thought their relationship could have used more page time. While it was mentioned that they used to be friends I never got that feeling. Even when they were swept away in the world full of Yakshini and Yaksha’s they were so separated from one another that I think the story would have benefited better if we only followed one POV and the other would be a side character. Lastly, I think the jumping around between our chapters living in “real” world Atlanta and then this magic Forest full of folklore creatures was too jarring, I think he story would of benefited more if we spent all our time in the magical forest full of the Yakshini and Yaksha’s.


Overall, I really enjoyed how flowery and magical this story felt. I would recommend this to young adult/middle grade audiences. I think a younger audience would relate to the themes and characters in this book more than an adult reader. But generally, I would recommend to anyone who enjoys flowery writing, nature and who enjoys a bit of hope in their books.


Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins Children’s Books for providing me with an arc in exchange for an honest review.

This was such a beautiful book! From the characters to the world of the story, it was so good. I love a good story that does world building and gives a sense of wonder. The cover did this, the plot did this and it gave good vibes.

Beautifully written and full of rich folklore and characters, but ultimately this one wasn't for me. I felt a bit misled by the cover, and also found one of the lead characters to be deeply frustrating - and while this was intentional, it still just didn't work for me. My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this in advance!

This book was over all good but a little hard to get into. Hard world building with the mythology for it being a YA book. But over all great story line and characters. I like the two main characters and there connection. Just a little slow for me at times but I can see others really like it if you like the mythology of Hindu and Buddhist.

I am so grateful this book existed because I have been in one of my longest reading slumps of the whole year! This fantasy put me at ease and had me flipping the pages (on my kindle) rapidly.

✰✰✰.25

I enjoyed the incorporation of Hindu & Buddhist folklore and the way the fantasy world was hidden beneath(?) the mortal world. The writing style was also quite pretty and I liked the slight whimsical feel, but this might not be for everyone.
I did like Ridhi's character and her passion for nature and perfumes, but I didn't like Nilesh because he was so arrogant and kind of annoying (typical privileged teenage boy). Unfortunately, he did not grow as much as a character, and his motivations were mostly centered around the pretty yakshini (Kamini) who he wanted to be with. In general, I would have loved more character + relationship development all around for all the characters. I also wanted to see more of Ridhi 'divining the leaves'.

In terms of representation, I did like that there was a disabled side character who got to exist without the narrative treating her disability as her only character trait. Her disability was also not just mentioned once and forgotten about. In this case, there are mentions of how she has bad days and good days with her disability, and her mobility aids are mentioned and used, but her role was primarily to be the caring older sister caught in a family conflict. Of course, more depth to her character (and the others) would always be good.
With the queer rep, I wish that it hadn't been introduced right at the end of the book as a throwaway line or two. Maybe Malav could have been a yakshini too?

Overall, this was a quick read that was a little disappointing, although I did like a few aspects of it.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

"Divining the Leaves" is an Indian inspired, YA fantasy/magical realism novel, that blends rich Indian folklore with the modern day world. We follow Ridhi and Nilesh as they get brought into the world of Yakshas and Yakshini's. While at first everything seems magical, not all is as it seems, and Nilesh and Ridhi will have to learn to work as a team to uncover the mysteries of this mystical realm.

Unfortunately this book was a miss for me. The synopsis led me to believe this would take place in a fantasy world or in India during a different time period, but it took place in modern day USA, with modern technology. That being said, I think I could have gotten past the fact that the synopsis didn't really equate to what was in the actual novel. But alas! The further I read, the more I found myself forcing my way through.

I'll start with the things I liked:
-This novel incorporates Indian folklore, which is really unique, and something I've not seen done often. There was a folktale at the beginning of each section of the novel, that presumably related to what was going on in the book. I found these hard to decipher, as the writing was very flowery compared to everything else, but ultimately enjoyed reading the folktales. I especially liked the last one. (I'm not sure if these folktales are actually real Indian folktales or just made up for the novel)
-I thought the incorporation of perfumes based on folktalkes was really cool! I've not read any other books where perfumery was involved, and it helped develop Ridhi as a character.

Unfortunately, there were a lot of things that were not done well in this book:

-My biggest pet peeve of all time is when an author throws representation into a book just to be like "THERE"S REPRESENTATION IN MY BOOK" without meaningful context. I LOVE seeing disability, minority, and LGBT representation in books, but I had a huge problem with how this author handled it. There is a character that has limited mobility of her limbs, and that's basically all we know about her. The author hints that at some point this character had no mobility issues, but none of this was every incorporated into the story. We don't know what happened, why this character is like this, and they go through no hardships because of it. If you took away the references to their limited mobility, the story would be the EXACT same and therefore I don't think it added anything to the overall story and was only inserted to say "LOOK I INCLUDED A DISABLED CHARACTER"! My other issue is that on the literal LAST PAGE OF THE BOOK, the author says "OH BTW the main character is bi". Well that's great, but not at all incorporated into the story-classic case of a token LGBT character (when it's just thrown in so the author can say they included one). I wish this was developed in the plot of the story and not just thrown in willy-nilly.
-Starting at part 2 of the story, everything just seemed like a mess. There was little character development, and there was so much going on that instead of developing the plot and focusing on important aspects(such as how Ridhi learns to divine the leaves and how that works**ahem**which is the title of the book), everything just seems mishmashed together until we get to the conclusion. A lot of conversations between characters seemed really disjoined, and a lot of important things seemed brushed over and underdeveloped. I was really disappointed in how the story seemed to pull at strings to make the plot work at the end.
-I had a hard time liking most of the characters. Nilesh is just too rash, and also really arrogant and self centered. At one point a character helps him out by allowing him to use his magical bath, then clothing and feeding him, and when Nilesh is told he has to help with something minor in return, he complains until he's told he'll get to see the girl he likes. How ungrateful. I don't really feel like Nilesh went through any growth throughout the book, and also feel like he very suddenly went from "ok being stuck in the spirit realm forever and never seeing his family again", to "I miss my whole family" to "Well guess I'll just be a tree" without any development.
-Instalove between multiple couples. I hate how Nilesh basically falls instantly in love with Kamini and decides everything will be ok as long as he has her, and very much did not feel any kind of connection between Ridhi and her love interest.
-The HECK kind of family doesn't immediately call the cops when their kid goes missing????
-There is a lot of Indian terminology thrown into this novel, which generally would be amazing to me! However, I couldn't parse what many of the words meant because they were lacking context, so I brought up google and wikipedia and the dictionary for EVERY WORD I didn't know, hoping to learn more about this rich Indian culture that is incorporated into this novel. About 50% of the time, I could not find any information on the word, and couldn't figure out if the word was made up for the book, or just a really obscure Indian festival. I wanted to know more about the festivals, clothing, food, etc mentioned
-Many times I found myself looking up some of the English words that I did not recognize, and felt like the author used a thesaurus to pick the most elaborate word choice, instead of one that is commonly used in English vernacular


I wanted to love this so much, but this book was just not for me from the start and continued to go downhill until the very last page. It's certainly not the worst thing I've ever read, but I just did not enjoy it. I would not recommend this to an adult audience, however, maybe the target audience (YA/teens) might relate better to the themes in this novel. 3/5 stars


Thank you so much to NetGalley and HarperCollins Children's Books for providing an arc in exchange for an honest review.

Exquisitely told, beautifully described, and with fantastic characters, Shveta Thakrar knocks it out of the park again with her latest book! Highly recommended! Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins Children's Books for a free ARC in exchange for an honest review!