Rating: 3.00 (1 ratings)
First published 2013
Nora Eldridge teaches elementary school in Cambridge and lives quietly on the margins of other people's lives. She gave up her artistic dreams years ago and settled into the role of reliable friend and neighbor. Everything changes when seven-year-old Reza Shahid enters her classroom. His father Skandar is a Lebanese professor visiting Harvard on fellowship. His mother Sirena is an Italian artist whose effortless glamour captivates Nora immediately. When bullies attack Reza and call him a terrorist, Nora steps in to help. The intervention draws her deeper into the Shahid family's world. She falls in love with all three of them in different ways. Nora begins to feel alive again as her carefully constructed boundaries dissolve. She rediscovers her passion for art through her connection with Sirena. But Sirena's selfish ambition ultimately leads to a crushing betrayal that destroys everything Nora thought she had gained.
Genres: literary-fiction, contemporary, psychological-thriller, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Cambridge, Harvard, Italy, Lebanon
Period: 21st-century
253 pages · Hardcover · A. A. Knopf
Content warnings: emotional-abuse, mental-illness