Tell Me How To Be by Neel Patel
(Format used for this read: Audiobook)
Renu Amin always seemed perfect: doting husband, beautiful house, healthy sons. But as the one-year anniversary of her husband’s death approaches, Renu is binge-watching soap operas and simmering with old resentments. She can’t stop wondering if, thirty-five years ago, she chose the wrong life. In Los Angeles, her son, Akash, has everything he ever wanted, but as he tries to kickstart his songwriting career and commit to his boyfriend, he is haunted by the painful memories he fled a decade ago. When his mother tells him she is selling the family home, Akash returns to Illinois, hoping to finally say goodbye and move on.
Together, Renu and Akash pack up the house, retreating further into the secrets that stand between them. Renu sends an innocent Facebook message to the man she almost married, sparking an emotional affair that calls into question everything she thought she knew about herself. Akash slips back into bad habits as he confronts his darkest secrets—including what really happened between him and the first boy who broke his heart. When their pasts catch up to them, Renu and Akash must decide between the lives they left behind and the ones they’ve since created, between making each other happy and setting themselves free.
By turns irreverent and tender, filled with the beats of ’90s R&B, Tell Me How to Be is about our earliest betrayals and the cost of reconciliation. But most of all, it is the love story of a mother and son each trying to figure out how to be in the world.
**Before I get going, just FYI that I’m recovering from a suspected mild concussion. I accidentally bonked myself in the head with a 20 lb dumbell during my own workout. Pretty embarassing injury for a fitness professional LOL 🤦♀️ Anyway, I am doing okay…just having headaches/pressure, so I’m trying to rest my brain as much as possible. Which means less reading and less screens. So you may see a slow down in pace for a bit. Hope to be back at it soon!**
Yall.
This book.
It was FRIGGIN’ AMAZING.
I get excited about books ALL THE TIME (obvi) so it’s nothing new to hear me say that….
But every now and then I get SUPER DUPER excited.
Because this story was so well written it just swept me away …AND the narration was so well done that it did too.
THIS book is one that I add to my top audiobook recommendations.
This story is about an Indian American family….about their culture, the society they live in, the dynamics under their own roof and the limitations they feel are placed upon them.
It is about their hidden identities, their hidden struggles…..about their loves and their losses.
It is about figuring out who they REALLY are….and what true freedom REALLY is.
It is about the heaviness of the memory of a first love…and a first heartbreak.
It is about how dominating “WHAT IFs” can be in brains and hearts.
This story is told from a mother and one of her son’s points of views, alternating between each for every chapter.
Yall…..I thought there were MULTIPLE NARRATORS for almost half the book…before I realized there is ONLY ONE.
I was SHOOOOOOKKKKKK.
I can not say ENOUGH about how TALENTED this narrator is! Vikas Adam is his name and WOWZA, my friends. Just WOWZA.
I had to constantly remind myself that it was only ONE person reading all the voices and dialogue. His voice was able to embody multiple genders, multiple accents, multiple ages, and multiple emotions. Yall will be FLOORED.
A fabulous narrator just adds SOOOO much to a book…if you are like me and alternate between print and audio versions for your reads, this one NEEDS TO BE ON AUDIO!
He gives SO much emotion to the words and dialogue—which are already DRIPPING with it just from the excellent fictional writing by the author—you as a reader can FEEL both of the main character’s pains as they voice them.
Even though they experience it for different reasons, both mother and son are struggling with many levels of unhappiness and are carrying deep, long hidden secrets.
Mother and son both long for something different…for healing…for new beginnings…for healed pasts…but neither quite knows how to move forward.
This is just a BEAUTIFULLY written story filled with hurt and history and also long awaited healings….how the haunted past affects the looming future…how hope and love of all kinds can endure years of neglect…how our past traumas can linger…how healing CAN come but doesn’t always look the way we thought it would.
The author really digs into how past and present relationships–with parents, siblings, friends and lovers—all form pieces of us or hide pieces of us…destroy pieces of us and also strengthen pieces of us.
This is also an examination of how an immigrant family figures out their place in America…figuring out how to hold on to pieces of their culture while at the same time assimilate into a new one….how confusing and hateful and infuriating and exclusionary whiteness can be….and how sometimes no matter how hard you try, a certain place will never truly feel like “home”.
Super wonderful book….lots and lots of emotions up in here so prepare to feel all your feels.