“Books aren’t always an escape; sometimes books teach us things. They show us the world; they don’t hide it.” Sara Nisha Adams’ debut novel, The Reading List shows us loneliness and grief and community and family and love. Although there are several people over the years who treasure a reading list, a teenager and a grieving husband and grandfather find that list helps them reach out to each other.

Aleisha Thomas is bored working her summer job at the Harrow Road Library in Wembley, London. She’s not a book or library person, but her older brother Aidan loved that library. He found peace there, and hid from their troubled home life. But, Aleisha is even rude to an elderly man, Mukesh Patel, when he stumbles into the library asking for a reading suggestion. She’s unwilling to help him, although one other patron does suggest To Kill a Mockingbird. Mukesh is embarrassed that he doesn’t know his way around the library, and he hustles out with just any book.

Mukesh’s wife, Naina, was the reader in the family. He loved to watch her read, but he never asked her about the books. She was the joy of his life, the one who kept him in touch with his three daughters and his beloved granddaughter, Priya. After her death two years earlier, he’s been a lost man. He doesn’t socialize with his friends. He has nothing to talk about with his daughters or Priya. He doesn’t eat right. In his grief one day, he tears through her saris. In the process, he finds a book she treasured, The Time Traveler’s Wife. That book leads him to the Harrow Road Library. He wants to feel that connection with Naina. Maybe another book can help him find her again.

Aleisha knows she shouldn’t have been rude to that old man. She knows her brother, Aidan, would have been ashamed of her, so she goes looking for the book the other patron recommended, To Kill a Mockingbird. Maybe she should read it so she can suggest a book to a patron. Tucked inside the book is a scribbled reading list. On the top it says, “Just in case you need it”. To Kill a Mockingbird tops the list.

While Aleisha works at the library, her brother works several jobs and tries to take care of their mother. Although she’s a graphic designer, she’s usually locked in her depression, locked in their lonely house while the two young people tiptoe around her. Like Aidan before her, Aleisha is finally finding an escape in a book though. And, once she realizes she has a list of suggestions for Mr. Patel, she begins to read the eight books on the list so she can stay one step ahead of him. And, she calls to tell him there’s a book for him.

Books for hard times, escape, respite. As Aleisha and Mr. P read through Rebecca, The Kite Runner, Life of Pi, they find their lives and their fears on those pages. They each tentatively reach for friendship, and they find it in unexpected places. At the lowest point in Aleisha’s life when she rejects everything she discovered over the summer, it’s Mr. P who tells her, “Books aren’t always an escape; sometimes books teach us things. They show us the world; they don’t hide it.”

Sara Nisha Adams’ debut is a beautiful, moving book. Book lovers will recognize the people, just as we recognize people we know in the stories we treasure. I’ve only hinted at some of the books on that treasured reading list. By the time you finish the book, the writer won’t come as a surprise. But, then, we all recognize the soul of a fellow reader with The Reading List. Don’t we?

The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams. William Morrow, 2021. ISBN 9780063025288 (hardcover), 384p.

FTC Full Disclosure – I was approved for a galley through NetGalley.