Title: The Night of the Storm
Author: Nishita Parekh
Publication: January 16, 2024
Publisher: Dutton
Genre: Mystery
Pages: 336
Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Goodreads | Author Website
SYNOPSIS: (From Goodreads)
Hurricane Harvey is about to hit Houston. Meanwhile, single mom Jia Shah is already having a rough week: her twelve-year-old son, Ishaan, has just been suspended from school for getting in a fight. Still reeling from the fallout of her divorce—their move to Houston, her family’s disapproval, the struggle to make ends meet on her own—now Jia is worried about Ishaan’s future, too. Will her solo parenting be enough? Doesn’t a boy need a father?
And now their apartment complex is under a mandatory evacuation order. Jia’s sister, Seema, has invited them to hunker down in her fancy house in Sugar Land, and despite Jia’s misgivings—Seema’s husband, Vipul, has been just a little too friendly with her lately—Jia concedes it’s probably the best place to keep Ishaan safe during the hurricane. With Jia’s philandering ex scrutinizing her every move, all too eager to snatch back custody of Ishaan, she can’t afford to make a mistake.
When Vipul’s brother and his wife show up on Seema’s doorstep, too, it’s a recipe for disaster. Grandma, the family matriarch, has never been shy about playing favorites among her sons and their wives. As the storm escalates, tensions rise quickly, and soon someone’s dead. Was it a horrible accident or is there a murderer in their midst?
With no help available until the floodwaters recede in the morning, Jia must protect her son and identify the culprit before she goes down for a crime she didn’t commit—or becomes the next victim.
REVIEW:
**A copy of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.**
Hurricanes and family drama is definitely the mashup to make for a good story. A house full of family that is uncomfortable around each other and all keeping secrets? Even better. All good if the delivery was perfect.
The story follows Jia and her son as they go to stay with family during a hurricane hitting Houston. Everyone has secrets and some inappropriate behavior making others uncomfortable. I liked the group of characters and how different Parekh made them. You had many personalities with different beliefs, while also sharing some similar beliefs. I also enjoyed the way there were a lot of hard-hitting topics like divorce in hyper-traditional families, sexual harassment, and affairs. When an author adds in so many nail-biting topics, its almost guaranteed to keep you turning the pages.
While the story did keep me reading because I just had to know how this was going to end, there were a few things that bothered me. Being someone who lives in Florida, I know quite a bit about hurricanes and some of the information regarding the storm itself was off. The timeline was the biggest bother. It seemed like the storm was just approaching, but suddenly highways were under water and the city was JUST issuing evacuations. Cities wouldn’t tell people to evacuate if the highways were under water. They would have done it before. The flooding at the house also confused me because of timeline issues. The way the storm progressed seemed weird. I’m not saying it was completely wrong, but the timeline confused things and didn’t mesh with what was happening. This caused plot holes and that makes reading it harder.
With that said, I knew I was going to keep reading because the main storyline of what was happening with Jia was enough to make me want to know who was behind all the crazy things happening. The Night of the Storm was filled with suspense as I tried to figure out who was the bad guy and were these people going to live through this storm. Pick up a copy and give it a read. Let us know what you think.
