When she first got her book deal about a year ago, I wrote about my friend Kamala Nair and her fantastic novel, The Girl in the Garden. It was so fun to come up with a dinner party themed on the book.

Here is the synopsis from Publisher’s Marketplace: “Kamala Nair’s THE GIRL IN THE GARDEN, the redemptive journey of a young woman unsure of her engagement, who revisits in memory the events of one scorching childhood summer when her beautiful yet troubled mother spirits her away from her home to an Indian village untouched by time, where she discovers in the jungle behind her ancestral house a spellbinding garden that harbors a terrifying secret.”:

The book just got its first review, and it’s great! (As it should be, obviously.)

An excerpt from the review:

I loved the whole setting in India.  Because Rakhee was born and raised in Minnesota, everything seen through her eyes seems exotic and unusual.  The seeming unfairness of some of the cultural aspects was a bit disturbing, but not unrealistic.  I really enjoyed Rakhee’s relationships with her cousins (especially Krishna, who was close to her age), and the way the characters were portrayed made it easy to tell them all apart (something that’s often troublesome when there’s more than one of a specific type of character, such as aunts, uncles, or cousins).

As we get closer to the publication date – June 15, 2011 – I’ll be writing more about how book clubs can entertain with and use the theme of The Girl in the Garden.