3.5 Stars

This was a funny little book and different too, both in a good way. The characters are easy to identify with as they have the usual problems any family has. I loved how honest and real they all were and I enjoyed that they each had their individual voices heard. I felt sympathy for them and could easily connect with them and their issues. I was hoping for the best for them and cheering them on.
There were various topics discussed within the pages that many of us can relate to, not just Indian families...divorce, infidelity, online dating, children out of wedlock, parental expectations etc. The topics were dealt with in an authentic way and sometimes I just had to laugh at the antics.

The different perspectives are clear, concise and done very well. This is basically a book about life in general, how to be happy and be part of a family and learn to forgive with some surprises along the way. I liked that it showed how life for immigrants is different that their children who are born in their new homeland. This was a loveable mess of a family and I enjoyed the time I spent with them.

First and foremost, I would like to disclose that I was provided a digital ARC from NetGalley in return for an honest review.

Late Bloomers centers around a family of four: Suresh and Lata, who are divorced from one another, and their adult children Priya and Nikesh. The chapters, alternating in turns from each of their perspectives, follow their lives through their various romantic relationships, and provides insight into the personalities, relationship structures, and thoughts of each one.

Late Bloomers is not a book that I would typically reach for on the shelf in a store, as I am not usually drawn to books that seem to focus on romance. But I am happy to admit when I'm wrong, and I am very glad that I read this book. Varadarajan's ability to get into the heads of the characters, and to provide a perspective not too strongly influenced by her own writing style, is impressive. At many points I had to take a small break from reading because a piece of wisdom casually thrown into the text made me pause and reflect.

While I am not in any of the situations the characters are dealing with in the book, I have been witness to many messy relationships in the lives of those around me and been affected by the way those relationships took course. Varadarajan may have as well, or at the very least is great at writing as if she has borne witness to these types of relationships firsthand. Her insightful glimpses into relationships falling apart, feeling stuck in something comfortable, and the dynamics of a family who are all imperfect and messy and broken all hit close to my heart.

Very mild, vague spoilers below: (the next paragraph of review is hidden on goodreads, so please skip if you're not interested in any sort of spoiler, even terribly vague ones)

I also appreciated that the story did not wrap up neatly with a nice bow. Some situations resolved, and others were left not fully certain. My one wish was for Suresh to have grown more as a character. After a while, I found his reactions and justifications to things a little frustrating and predictable, but that does not mean he wasn't well-written; only that I wished for him to change throughout the story in the same amount that the other characters changed and grew. I wished for him to have a tangible show of progress like all the other characters - but I will acknowledge that people learning and growing at their own varied paces is more akin to real life.

If you love characters that feel human and real, or tales about people's lives in various states of messy drama, or a book that's easy to read but also casually drops life-lessons and wisdom on you while being kind of funny, you will definitely enjoy this book.

"Late Bloomers" is a touching, humorous and compelling novel that follows the lives of a Indian-American family as they navigate love in all its forms. We follow the story of Suresh and Lata Raman, a couple who recently divorced after thirty-six years of an unhappy arranged marriage, and their children Nikesh and Priya, as they all embark on new paths in their lives. Suresh attempts online dating and meets a younger woman, while Lata enjoys her newfound independence and is surprised when a professor starts flirting with her. Meanwhile, their daughter Priya disapproves of her father's online pursuits while engaging in a secret affair, and their son hides the truth about his seemingly perfect marriage. Over the course of three weeks, the family will uncover each other's secrets, confront the limits of love and loyalty, and explore second chances in life. The novel introduces a new voice in fiction, charming, funny, and moving, and follows the four individuals as they attempt to find happiness both in their own lives and as a family.

Deepa Varadarajan skillfully blends modern-day issues with traditional family values, creating a relatable and compelling story of a family's struggle to find happiness in a rapidly changing world. The characters are complex and lovable, each with their own distinctive voice, secrets and desires. Although each of the characters have their own flaws, the author instils them with intelligence and compassion and at the end we come to realize that everyone is doing the best they can, given what they knew and the cards they were dealt. "Late Bloomers" is a tender exploration of family dynamics, personal growth, and the possibility for change, and is sure to make readers laugh and cry in equal parts. I didn’t want to say goodbye to these characters and would not have opposed to another 200 pages of their stories! Overall, it is a heartwarming and enjoyable read that offers a refreshing perspective on both the struggles and triumphs of the immigrant experience and family life in contemporary America.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for sharing an advanced digital copy with me in exchange for an honest review! “Late Bloomers” comes out May 2nd, 2023!

First of all let me start off by saying that I love, love, love reading books by diverse authors. Late Bloomers is the heart-warming and insightful story of, an Indian American couple who divorce after three decades of an arranged marriage. Seeking online dating for Suresh and a new relationship for Lata, they questions there new lives. This is a great story that is timeless and refreshing. I loved it! Thanks to netgalley for an advanced copy.

Late Bloomers follows four family members as they explore relationships and adult struggles. Suresh and Lata had an arranged marriage and recently divorced after decades together. Suresh entirely blames Lata for leaving him, while Lata thinks Suresh was always a horrible husband. Both are working out the kinks of dating new people. Priya is having an affair with a married man. Nikesh has a baby with a coworker, and family judgment ensues. All around, so so much family judgment without desire for understanding.

Deepa Varadarajan’s writing is excellent, but I can’t say I enjoyed this book much — all the characters are so unlikeable! They’re selfish and can’t see past their own issues to empathize with family members. I’d read another of Varadarajan’s books, but this one wasn’t for me.


Thank you to Random House for an ACR in exchange for my review.

I found Late Bloomers to be just ok. The concept and story were interesting, but I found it really hard to be interested in any of the characters or what happened to them. I'm always frustrated by books where major plot points could be easily resolved if the characters just talked to each other, and Late Bloomers was definitely one of those books. If you're not bothered by that, you would probably enjoy it, but if you find plots that are driven by lack of communication or miscommunication annoying, you should probably skip it.

This is a charming debut novel. We meet an Indian American family who's lives are in turmoil as they try to reconcile their lives after the divorce of the parents after a long arranged marriage. The kids seem to have had a pleasant childhood but it was most interesting to see how the older values of their parents affected them.
The book is a chaotic ride through their current circumstances with the mother establishing herself in a new job and making some quirky friends, and the father looking for love on internet dating.
The children have their own romantic challenges.
How they all interact and in some cases fail to interact is a roller coaster ride which I found quite enjoyable.
The writing and dialog was good. The plot was full of surprises at every turn. The characters were well done and I especially related to the females in the story
The ending was satisfying as well.
In reading multicultural books, I find joy in seeing the common feelings of humanity about love and family.
Highly recommend this book for readers looking for a "light" read with some bite ! You will laugh out loud and cry in your pillow.

[4.5 stars]
This debut family drama is told in a warm, funny voice that brought me back to many of the books I loved in 2022. An Indian couple (living in Texas) who divorce 36 years into an arranged marriage both venture into the dating world to sometimes funny and sometimes disastrous results while their 2 grown children, a son and daughter, are also going through struggles in their own lives. This is a story about second acts and pushing out of your comfort zone even when it’s scary. Amid this big change in the family, everyone acts out of character (including the grown children) - and the family has to come to terms with its “new normal.” I loved the commentary about marriage, relationships with adult children, and parenting adult children. It felt like a more light-hearted, less jaded, and less sarcastic version of Fleishman is in Trouble. The mix of humor, sentimentality, nostalgia, and warm-heartedness made this a standout debut for me.

Late Bloomers, by Deepa Varadarajan

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced readers copy of this book.

This delightful and insightful novel brings us a fractured family of four, and, in their different voices, shows how adult children and parents can renegotiate new ways of being with and for each other.

Suresh, 59, and Lata, 57, had an arranged marriage in their native India, and have lived in Texas since right after their wedding. But they were never compatible, and after 36 years, a well-to-do lifestyle, and with two grown children, Lata decides she wants a divorce. Lata, college-educated in India, now works as a library assistant at a local college, and moves away from their tight-knit Indian community – not far, but enough so that she no longer socializes with old friends. And given Suresh’s negative, critical, and often tactless comments, neither does he.

Suresh, a retired systems analyst, did not want the divorce, and it is he who introduces us to the situation, a year later, as he wryly describes his experiences with an Indian-singles dating site, about which Lata knows nothing. He relies for advice and encouragement on his son, Nikesh, 30 years old, a Harvard-educated attorney living in New York City, married to an older woman (and his boss at the law firm) with whom he has a one-year-old son.

Their grown daughter, Priya, 35, is a tenure-track professor of medieval history, teaching in Austin, about two hours from where she grew up. She is involved with a married man, about whom her family knows nothing, and this has created emotional distance the others do not understand.

Other well-drawn characters circle these four.

The book begins several weeks before the first birthday of Suresh’s and Lata’s grandson, Alok, and the various relationships come to a breaking point at the birthday party, where everyone is together, precipitating the need to find a new equilibrium for all.

The book deftly explores the issues of being the parents of adult children, and of the lies (what Suresh calls RDTs, “reasonable deviations from the truth”) and secrets we tell and keep in order to maintain our own self-images.

Highly recommended both for the pleasure of reading the story, and of thinking about the problems raised.

A wonderful, funny and insightful novel with deftly-drawn characters. Everything about this novel feels real -- the story line, the situations the people find themselves in and their reactions to them. Told in four distinct first-person voices, (father, mother, grown single daughter and married son), supporting characters are just as fully-realized and human (even the eight-year-old boy) as the central characters. There is a clear picture of each individual, their foibles, follies and desires. The family is from India, and their previous adaptation to life in Texas is part of the story, but not the central part. Complexed by their own lives, all are trying to make sense of them for the better.

The mother's story is so poignant. ("...I'd spent thirty-six years like a woman treading on a field of landmines.") But no character is slighted. (Commenting on the dating sites on the internet, Suresh, the father, declares "The sites seemed endless. Was there one for every flavor of desolation?") The care the author took creating people the reader cares about, all of them, makes this a fantastic read. And the insightfulness ("Parenting adults was so much harder than parenting children. Why didn't anyone ever tell you that?") must come from real life.

The persona and narrative are so polished, it's hard to believe this is a first novel. And the title of the book is perfect! I'm hoping this is just the first of many novels by Deepa Varadarajan.

I loved this book! The multiple POV storyline follows a family post divorce. The parents, Suresh and Lata have to navigate having independent lives after being married for decades. Their adult children have their own multitude of life events that are complex and difficult to navigate. This story shows how you can mess up, make scary choices and sometimes fail miserably and yet, life will still go on. This charming book will make you laugh, cry and probably cringe!
I highly recommend checking out this well written book, coming soon in May!

I want to thank @penguinrandomhouse @netgalley and @deepavaradara for the gifted copy! I enjoyed it immensely!

I loved this novel! This was such a fun unconventional family drama. There were some genuinely poignant moments and there were also moments that made me laugh out loud. I really enjoyed the dynamic of parents and children who are all adults and all very much still figuring things out. This is a quick read and a very enjoyable one.

Thank you to Netgalley & Random House for this ARC. I was immediately drawn the beautiful cover and was intrigued by the title. I love a good underdog moment.

This story follows a family in the aftermath of divorce by Lata and Suresh after 30+ years of marriage. Lata and Suresh's kids while seemingly fine, each have their own issues they are working through and everyone needs to have a moment to grow and bloom.

I really enjoyed Lata's character and I found myself rooting for her throughout. The other characters weren't super likable and I was frustrated with how selfish and in their own way they were.

I thought the story was well written but not my favorite.

DNF @ 21%

I really wanted to enjoy this one. Such an interesting blurb and alternating chapters definitely intrigued me.

However, overall, this one felt slow. I didn't feel like I was rooting for any of the characters as they all seemed problematic in their own way. There is also little action plotwise, but if you enjoy more character driven reads, this is definitely that.

I get life isn't perfect and we have to kind of live for ourselves but wish there was a little more warmth to this one besides quick laughs at the expense of others.

Thank you Random House and Netgalley for a free e-copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

What a surprise! This exceeded my expectations and was an enjoyable escape. A family dynamic uniquely flawed and forever changed, unlikable yet lovable personalities that are looking for the next transition in an unscripted life.Funny, maddening & totally relatable

I wanted to enjoy this book so much. I love reading about other cultures and their family dynamics and the premise caught my interest from the first time I saw it. The book started off well, I liked the different points of view and getting to know the main characters. However, if you start reading this book and expect it to be a story of growth and development, let me save you some time. Each character only became more selfish and self-centered as the story progressed. It was so frustrating to read this and not see any actual changes or lessons learned. I would almost say this is a family of narcissists. At the very least they were each way too immature and childish to be grown adults. I don't believe I am misunderstanding due to any sort of culture differences either. This was just plain self-absorbed behaviors. I would have preferred if the story arc didn't necessarily tie everything up, but at least showed more growth and understanding of their words and actions and how they affected others. I went from being interested and liking the characters to just wanting the story to be over. I'm going back and forth between two and three stars, I'd say its a 2.5 based solely on that at least, despite the characters and plot, it was written well.

Thank you so much to the author, publisher and NetGalley for this ARC!

I found this book very readable & enjoyed it more than I initially thought I would, which was a pleasant surprise. For those who enjoy more plot-driven books, this isn’t one of those novels; I definitely found it more character-driven. I was more invested in certain character’s storylines than others- namely Lata and Nikesh, I enjoyed the character of Priya, but she really didn’t have all that much going on plot-wise. Suresh was quite crotchety and unpleasant, but he was supposed to be. I really enjoyed that this story was partly told from the perspective of Lata and Suresh, an Indian couple who’d had an arranged marriage, and had gotten a late-in-life divorce after thirty-some years of marriage, because it’s not one that I often see in novels. For one, I haven’t read many novels that explore arranged marriage, & I also haven’t read many novels that talk about an older couple getting divorced and how it impacts the family dynamic. It was quite interesting but bittersweet to examine this dynamic- I think the sadness, hope, fear, and trepidation and uncertainty these characters were feeling was captured so well, especially through the mother Lata’s voice. She was an especially endearing character and I was rooting so hard for her happiness. I would have liked to see a bit more happen plot-wise, as it felt a little bit anticlimactic, but overall this felt like a gentle story- if that makes any sense. There isn’t a ton of darkness, no twists or shock value, but I really appreciated this story because it highlights the fact that we’re all really just doing our best, and that our parents are not perfect people and often make mistakes and stumble through life, just as much as we do as their children. Age doesn’t always mean wisdom, and we can’t expect to have everything figured out just because we’ve followed all the rules. This novel reiterated the message that it’s never too late to start over, and I loved seeing a woman take a stand & try to create a better, happier life for herself after being in an unhappy marriage for so many years, even though it might have scared her to her core. I could definitely relate to certain parts of this book- feeling some animosity towards your parents, that weird moment when you feel the role-reversal of having to take care of or worry about your parents when historically they’ve been the ones taking care of you. I loved that this wasn’t a perfect family and that not everything was resolved with a perfect little bow, because that wouldn’t have been realistic.

This novel focuses on a traditional Indian family transplanted in Texas and it begins after the mother, Lata, bravely leaves her 30+ year arranged marriage with Suresh. There are four perspectives that interchange throughout the novel - Lata, Suresh and their adult children Priya and Nikesh. Lata is just learning how to live alone while Suresh is trying online dating and Priya is dating a married man. Nikesh’s life looks perfect in Brooklyn with his wife and baby but when everyone (and I mean everyone) ends up in Lata’s apartment for Nikesh’s son’s first birthday all secrets are revealed and the family realizes nothing is what it seems and no one has their life together.

I enjoyed the general storyline and the romantic struggles of the characters, but I wanted to like this book more than I did. None of the characters really spoke to me except one of the ancillary characters (Lata’s friend at the library where she worked – who had the funniest lines in the book) because there was very little dimension or growth to the characters and the story was a bit predictable for me. However there was humor and warmth in the book that I did enjoy.

Thank you to Net Galley and Random House Publishing Group for providing me with the chance to review.

A heartfelt look at a family who is just trying to keep on keeping on! The characters were likeable and the author did a great job of each of the storylines and intertwining them in all the right spots! This was a quick read and a reminder that we don't always know what people are dealing with, no matter how things look on the surface and that love and family can overcome a lot when needed.

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House Publishing, Random House for the ARC of this book.

Despite not usually being my genre of choice, I enjoyed this! It was interesting to read about an arranged marriage, and the characters were all well drawn, if not completely likable (I could have done with a few less Suresh chapters). I don't think it'll stick with me, but I'd recommend it to general fiction readers for sure and I would read another book by this author. I liked it - 3 stars.