The Night of the Storm

Parekh’s disappointing debut squanders her intriguing idea to set a closed-circle mystery in Houston, Tex., during Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Jia Shah, recently divorced and stuck in a dull data-entry job, is struggling to raise her teenage son, Ishaan, who’s just been suspended from school. Jia’s worries that the suspension might threaten her custody of Ishaan, which her ex-husband is contesting, are displaced by frantic news reports about the hurricane. Fearing her home will be flooded and possibly destroyed, Jia heads to her sister Seema’s house, where Jia and Ishaan try to ride out the storm along with Seema’s family. Adding to Jia’s anxiety is her clandestine entanglement with Seema’s husband, Vipul—the details of which are gradually revealed to the reader. Reports that burglars are targeting abandoned homes near Seema’s escalate tensions further. As the storm worsens, one of Seema’s neighbors joins the family for refuge, and someone in the home is killed. Parekh’s strong concept gets bogged down in mostly milquetoast family drama, and the final solution isn’t worth the slog. There are signs here that Parekh has a bright future, but this misses the mark. Agent: Lori Galvin, Aevitas Creative. (Jan.)