"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!