Kismet

A Thriller

By: Amina Akhtar

Narrated by: Dilshad Vadsaria, Kimberly Woods, Rhett Samuel Price

From Amina Akhtar comes a viciously funny thriller about wellness - the smoothies, the secrets, and the deliciously deadly impulses.

Lifelong New Yorker Ronnie Khan never thought she’d leave Queens. She’s not an “aim high, dream big” person - until she meets socialite wellness guru Marley Dewhurst.

Marley isn’t just a visionary; she’s a revelation. Seduced by the fever dream of finding her best self, Ronnie makes for the desert mountains of Sedona, Arizona.

Healing yoga, transcendent hikes, epic juice cleanses...Ronnie consumes her new bougie existence like a fine wine. But is it, really? Or is this whole self-care business a little sour?

When the glam gurus around town start turning up gruesomely murdered, Ronnie has her answer: all is not well in wellness town. As Marley’s blind ambition veers into madness, Ronnie fears for her life.

©2022 Amina Akhtar (P)2022 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Critic reviews

“Much like the White Lotus in Thailand, Sedona, Ariz., has a reputation for spirituality that attracts all manner of gurus, yogis, and so-called wellness aficionados. Their pretensions are witheringly lampooned in this comic thriller about Ronnie, a Pakistani American who tags along to the desert enclave with her friend turned life coach, Marley. It isn’t long before the dark side of paradise reveals itself, in the form of a dead body—the first of many that soon turn up in various states of dismemberment. Akhtar has a keen eye for the hypocrisy of the namaste-espousing elite, and no vampire facial, jar of manuka honey, or hot yoga session is spared from her mordantly funny wit.”–The New York Times

“An amusing takedown of influencer culture.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Readers will be curious to see what this talented author does next.”—Publishers Weekly

This isn't a book to be passed up!!!

Whoa, whoa, whoa! My jaw is still on the floor! I tried to figure out who the killer was but failed with each guess. Try as you may. You may not figure it out either until the very end. Marley worked my nerves and only treated Ronnie nicely when she felt Ronnie benefited her, all while she treated Ronnie like some sort of charity case. I hated that Ronnie allowed herself to be manipulated so much by Marley. It made sense, though, considering how Ronnie was treated by her aunt. Moving to Sedona changed everyone's lives and brought with it some jaw-dropping reveals, too.

Just ok

I was bummed that I didn’t love this book. It may have been the narration, which was halting and had strange pauses. I ended up speeding up to 1.3x, which helped. The story was ok - I will say the ending was good!

Surprize

The about should have said the main character was an American born Pakistanie. thar fact really helped as I too am Brown skinned ans can relate to the isolation she felt. I guessed a the way through but all the clues were there. I didn't figure out the ending so I really enjoyed this book.

Great! then meh

Overall I think it was a great book. But I feel like the falling action & the ending fell flat. Everything leading to the climax had me so intrigued & I couldn't stop listening. But then when it got to the best part of the book, I felt a bit let down by how simple it all felt & how smooth the ending went. Especially with such a big plot twist at the end. It almost felt rushed. But I'm glad I was introduced to this book. I LOVED the characters.

Could have been good

This book had the potential to be pretty good. The storyline, overall, was interesting but there were several things that completely distracted me. First, the narration had serval random, long pauses in places were they shouldn’t be. I had to keep checking my phone to see if I got bounced out of the audible app. The narrative for Ronnie was flat: no inflection and no emotion (please note, overwrought emotion annoys me terribly). Almost like someone reading the ingredients on a cereal box. In addition to the technical issues, I did have some trouble stomaching the story line. First, it’s a book with mostly hateful characters, all the way around. That was ok, it’s not uncommon to dislike the main characters; in fact, I often find that more interesting. What I didn’t like, and I have been seeing a lot of this in recent books, is the underlying political themes. Essentially, all white people are bad. Now, if this wasn’t such a common theme through nearly every recently written book, I wouldn’t be so bothered by it. After all, they are supposed to be writing from the character’s pov. Unfortunately, this appears to be the underlying theme of many books written in the last few years. The irony is, the main character is Muslim and gets extremely offended when anyone, especially white people, ask questions about the Muslim faith or makes inappropriate comments, yet has no issue with stereotyping anyone who is white, flys an American flag, carries a gun or has a trump banner. She then states she doesn’t like stereotyping. Again, wouldn’t have thought a thing about it except the majority of the books offered in the plus catalog follow the same lines: white people are bad and they are all racist. The really odd part is she never mentions negative interactions with anyone that is not part of her own culture, prior to Sedona. Is it too much to ask for some entertainment without stereotyping the majority of the population? I stopped watching tv (at one point she thinks to herself one should watch less tv regarding the stereotyping of the Muslim faith) because of exactly this. It’s been pretty difficult to find a book that doesn’t employ these tactics and becoming less and less enjoyable.

Loved the story, the audio though…

I really liked this story. The ending is jaw dropping and I really liked it he honest perspective of a non-white narrator. The audio though, ugh…the performances were good (especially the ravens who were terrifying and that narrator is amazing). But the editing???? Why are there so many weird pauses?? I had to keep checking my phone to make sure nothing had stopped. Whoever edited this needs to find another career…

Was dreading finishing it but didn’t want to waste a credit

OK, I love a good thriller but this one’s feels like it was written by a 15-year-old girl. Very emotional and main characters insecurities of her own self make the book hard to read for me. I noticed it would take myself a little bit of convincing to even start the next chapter.

Weird recording

A few people have mentioned the odd pauses, and I just had to say that it really is distracting, so much so that I almost put it down a few times. The narrator for Ronnie was not very professional—her reading was monotonous and wooden. I can’t understand how this could be sold this way. It’s like someone made it in their basement.

I liked the ravens, but I like magical realism. If you don’t like that kind of thing, don’t read this.

How do I I become a narrator?

The story was not so bad but the monotone, third grade style narration ruined it for me. No intonation or expression. Was there even punctuation in the story? If there was, she didn’t see it.

Read, Donʻt Listen!

I nearly DNF just a few chapters in because of how bad the narration was, but decided to switch to reading in case thatʻs why I was struggling with this one, and Iʻm so glad I did.

Others have called the narrator monotone; I didn't have a problem with that so much as the weird, random, long pauses. On more than one occasion I thought my audio had frozen. I've seen some reviewers complain about the writing, and I will admit that the sentence structure is sometimes clunky, but not so much that I couldn't enjoy the story.

As far as the story goes, this definitely isn't a campy beach read thriller. There are some weird, gothic elements, and this absolutely is a commentary on how white-dominated "wellness" culture appropriates Eastern spirituality and repackages it to sell at exorbitant prices, often back at the people the practices were stolen from (we have an early scene of the desi protagonist attempting to learn yoga from a white instructor with a BRITISH accent).

*potential spoilers below*

A lot of the negative reviewers seem to be upset about "anti-white racism." This book isnʻt anti-white. Itʻs anti-abuse. The protagonist is subjected to two forms of abuse: one familial, i.e. someone who is also Pakistani; the other cultural, i.e. wealthy whites exploiting Eastern cultural practices. The protagonist disavows her blood family (brown), to lay roots in her chosen community (white). The author shows us problematic elements of both cultures and how they have harmed the protagonist, but also shows us how the protagonist chooses to embrace aspects of both.

If you are triggered by scenes of interpersonal violence, you may want to proceed with caution. If youʻre someone who thinks calling out the white-dominated wellness industry translates as "all white people are bad," this is probably not for you. If you can handle both those things, and some weird supernatural elements, I highly recommend this. There was one major twist at the end that I did not see coming, and that almost never happens. Yes, thereʻs a LOT going on in this book, but I really do think the author pulls it off.