Tell Me How to Be

* INAUGURAL LILLY'S LIBRARY BOOK CLUB PICK FROM LILLY SINGH *

"A beautiful book about a mother and son...I really loved this book."--Rumaan Alam on The TODAY Show

"My first great read of 2022...[Will] make you cringe with recognition and melt with longing." --Jennifer Weiner

"This debut novel about an Indian-American family has all the right ingredients: family secrets, love, sexuality, loss, identity questions and remorse." --Good Morning America

Renu Amin always seemed perfect. But as the one-year anniversary of her husband's death approaches, she 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 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.

Author: Neel Patel
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Published: 12/07/2021
Pages: 336
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.90lbs
Size: 8.30h x 5.40w x 1.30d
ISBN: 9781250184979


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 07/01/2020 pg. 39
Library Journal Prepub Alert 07/01/2021 pg. 5
Kirkus Reviews 09/15/2021
Publishers Weekly 09/20/2021
Booklist 11/01/2021 pg. 45

About the Author
Neel Patel is a first-generation Indian American who grew up in Champaign, Illinois. His debut story collection, If You See Me, Don't Say Hi, was a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice and was long-listed for the Story Prize and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. He currently lives in Los Angeles. Tell Me How to Be is his debut novel.