Then, Now, Always

November 25, 2019
Shroff manages to make several of romance’s most enduring tropes feel fresh in her cute contemporary debut. Sam Hutcherson and Maya Rao first fell in love 15 years ago, when Maya worked as a nanny for Sam’s niece and nephew in Maryland, bonding over their shared Indian heritage and affection for the kids. When Maya found out she was pregnant with Sam’s child, she dumped Sam without explanation, breaking his heart. Now the co-owner of a bakery café in Queens, N.Y., Maya has raised her daughter, Samantha, on her own. But when teenage Samantha lands in legal trouble at her snooty Manhattan prep school, Maya has no choice but to reach out to her daughter’s father and her first love for help. Sam is now a successful attorney, and is happily engaged to another woman. But the discovery that he has a daughter, along with the reappearance of Maya in his life, throws his world off-kilter. Their sweet second-chance romance is rendered with nimble prose, quick plotting, and rich cultural details, making it clear that Shroff a writer to watch. Agent: Rachel Brooks, Bookends.

Single mother Maya Rao seems even more real, thanks to narrator Soneela Nankani's lilting Indian accent with its subtle British flavor. Maya's second-chance love story emerges through flashbacks between the years 1996 and 2012. Her youthful romance with law student Sam Hutcherson resulted in a child, who is revealed to Sam 16 years later. Nankani narrates alternating chapters from Maya and Sam. Well-differentiated characters include Maya, Sam, and Sam's strong-willed mother. Sam speaks with an American accent, and his mother with a definitive Indian accent. As Sam and Maya reconnect in New York City, past misunderstandings are unraveled through Nankani's measured storytelling. Nankani mirrors Maya's trepidation and Sam's consternation in Shroff's clean romance whose simple premise owes its charm to details of Indian-American food and culture. C.A. � AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine