Let me start by saying I don’t mind a slow-burn novel. I don’t mind getting to know the characters on a deeper level before any action takes place. And I don’t have a problem with books that lean more on character development rather than exciting plot twists. However, with “Habitations” by Sheila Sundar, the burn was much, much too slow, and I was left feeling very blase by the time I finished the book. What would have been a solid four-star read turned into barely three-stars.

The story follows Vega, a young Indian woman who struggles to find her way in the world of academia after losing her teenage sister to a fatal medical issue. Vega moves to the states and tries to move ahead in her career, while feeling stifled by her trauma (and eventually by her marriage). Vega is one of those characters who feels things very deeply but doesn’t ever want to take steps to change her ennui. She feels lonely but doesn’t try to remedy the loneliness. She constantly makes poor choices (a hallmark of grief), but these paths don’t ever lead to true growth. These traits would not have felt so frustrating to me if there had been some kind of forward movement with her as a protagonist, but it felt like the book ended in the exact same place it started.

My other main grievance was that this was just too long. There were entire chapters that just dragged the whole story down. And there were many side characters that felt really unnecessary. When I was done reading it, I thought of three or four characters that could have been completely eliminated – their absence not only wouldn’t have been noticed by the reader, but it might have actually helped the story to move along at a more reasonable pace.

Sundar is a talented writer; she writes about the pain of grief and of sibling loss in a realistic, moving way. But her unique writing style and her cadence were lost within the shuffle of a novel that should have been cut by at least 100 pages.

3 stars

* Free ARC provided by Simon & Schuster in exchange for an honest review*