
Member Reviews

A Bomb Placed Close to the Heart by Nishant Batsha (book cover is in image) is the story of how Cora Trent and Indra Mukherjee meet, fall in love and struggle to reconcile the racial struggles they face in their interracial marriage. While I was interested in the story itself, this was such a slow burn and had such uneven pacing I found myself struggling to stay engaged.
I had the good fortune of having both the ALC and ARC. I found myself going back to the narration by Vikas Adam because it was so well done, and was the reason why I did not DNF this book.
Thank you @harperaudio, @eccobooks and @netgalley for the opportunity to listen to this ALC and read this eARC. All opinions are my own.
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i am conflicted about this book. i thought the writing was beautiful, and the lives of the characters felt real and immersive. however, i felt that the story really dragged in the middle. i am confused by cora’s character, a strong minded feminist that decides to leave it all behind for a man she met 2 months ago. a lot of the plot is just the characters getting close to happiness and it being ripped away. it got boring eventually. i am just not the target audience for this novel. i can see someone really loving it, especially if you are really into historical fiction. the audiobook is great! the narration really helped me get through the story.
thank you netgalley and harperaudio for the audioarc!

This was a thought provoking read. Several political activists from around the world but whose stories are not often highlighted in fiction. I appreciated the Indian and Irish perspectives, for example. This is also the story of marriage and how it changes over time, and what we give up and what we don't when we join our lives to other people. A little slow moving in places, but a story well told.

Set in 1917, we meet Indra, a revolutionary who has fled his homeland in India and has ended up in California. At a party near Stanford University, he meets Cora an American graduate student who is seeking a new life as a writer and idealist. They quickly fall in love and marry.
Indra and Cora are young and naive, attending protests and discussing politics, wanting to be a part of the movement without realizing the inherent dangers they are putting themselves in. Forced to flee across the country, Indra and Cora’s relationship is put to the test.
It was interesting to read a story set during World War I that focused on an Indian revolutionary perspective.
The story was very slow at the start and the pacing was off. I debated what I’d rate this as the writing was gorgeous and the story interesting but the pacing was an issue.
3.5⭐️

I do not read a lot of historical fiction, but I really enjoyed this one. The characters were well developed and had me hooked. I absolutely loved the narrator’s.

Politics of the early 20th century fascinate me so I love when I can find a solid novel written about those struggles. Nishant Batsha's A Bomb Placed Close to the Heart is a beautifully written story about Indra, a revolutionary recently come to the US, and Cora, who has been raised around 19th/20th century industry. In a world that is wrapped up in nationalism and jingoism amidst the banner of the first World War, Indra and Cora try to find their place in it.
I loved that audio version of this story--it was well produced and the narrator did an excellent job.
This is the perfect read for fans of historical fiction who like it to lean into the nitty gritty of the time period.

While there's a love story at the center of this novel, it's more clearly the love of revolutions than of revolutionaries. Both of our main characters is fighting to exit the mold that society views them through, both traditionally and within their revolutionary context, and they succeed slightly more than they fail.
I was surprised at the lack of interrogation of reliance on certain external funding sources, while fretting over others, but the base critique of capitalism was generally refreshing.
I'm hopeful that readers without a strong background in the Indian independence movement or the run-up to WWI in the US will still be able to follow this story, but I think the audiobook will be more difficult for them than the print text.
Audiobook ARC provided by NetGalley.