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quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
Naeli loves her life in Hyderabad, India, yet she yearns to find her English father, who left when she was little. When a mysterious ticket arrives from England, Naeli abandons her familiar world to track him down. Armed only with her father’s name and cherished violin, she embarks on a bold adventure through Victorian London and beyond …
It’s the late 19th century.
A year ago Naeli Harwood’s mother Jemandee Delara (the favourite musician of Hyderabad’s Nizam) died from malaria. She hasn’t seen or heard from her father James - a doctor from England - since he returned to Britain for a visit when she was 5. But now she has received a second class ticket for a ship to England together with a pouch of money. She’s certain that it has come from her father, but there’s no letter, only a brief note that asks her to bring the violin her father gave her plus the ticket is only for her and not her ayah, Vanya.
Determined to find out what happened to her father, she travels alone, meeting and forming a friendship Jack and his ayah Feroz whose clergyman father is sending him to Westminster boarding school. Once in England, however, instead of meeting her father Naeli is taken to lodgings above a pie shop in London where she is put to work by the owner, Mrs Stevens, and her violin is stolen.
Alone in a strange country, Naeli must try to work out who has sent for her and why …
Jasbinder Bilan’s standalone historical adventure for readers aged 9+ is a mixed affair. I liked the fact that this is a story about bi-racial children with Indian and English heritage as it’s not something that gets covered a lot. Naeli is a plucky and determined character with a real gift for music and I liked her friendship with the confident Jack but the plot is episodic and for me missed emotional details that would have helped flesh it out.
I picked this up because I’m always interested in historical novels that bring something beyond the pale, English experience and Bilan’s book has that in abundance. I really liked the fact that both Naeli and Jack are children of the Empire, growing up in India and able to speak both English and Hindustani. However it is a shame that Bilan doesn’t look into the emotional impact of that heritage on them both, especially with Naeli who has in effect been abandoned by her white English father because I think that would have given her - and her determination to find him - some extra dimension. I also think that Jack is a little under-baked on the page, characterised by his hated of boarding school more than anything else and I wish there’d been more to him in terms of why he wants to support Naeli, who he only meets on the ship over to Southampton.
The story itself is episodic with Naeli moving from setting to setting in a way that feels patchy. This isn’t helped by the fact that Naeli’s uncle Daniel doesn’t appear until over 80 pages in and is thinly drawn with Bilan holding back the reason for his antagonism until the final quarter, at which point all the explanations that come are quite rushed. The antagonist is two-dimensional and I wanted more explanation for their actions and the decisions they take, not least because the central mystery seems to be fairly easy to solve.
None of this is to say that the book is bad - there is much to enjoy with Naeli herself - and there is a sense of pace here. Even though this book didn’t wholly work for me, I would nevertheless check out Bilan’s other work on the strength of it.
The Verdict:
Jasbinder Bilan’s standalone historical adventure for readers aged 9+ is a mixed affair. I liked the fact that this is a story about bi-racial children with Indian and English heritage as it’s not something that gets covered a lot. Naeli is a plucky and determined character with a real gift for music and I liked her friendship with the confident Jack but the plot is episodic and for me missed emotional details that would have helped flesh it out.
NAELI AND THE SECRET SONG was released in the United Kingdom on 5 June 2025. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
Naeli loves her life in Hyderabad, India, yet she yearns to find her English father, who left when she was little. When a mysterious ticket arrives from England, Naeli abandons her familiar world to track him down. Armed only with her father’s name and cherished violin, she embarks on a bold adventure through Victorian London and beyond …
It’s the late 19th century.
A year ago Naeli Harwood’s mother Jemandee Delara (the favourite musician of Hyderabad’s Nizam) died from malaria. She hasn’t seen or heard from her father James - a doctor from England - since he returned to Britain for a visit when she was 5. But now she has received a second class ticket for a ship to England together with a pouch of money. She’s certain that it has come from her father, but there’s no letter, only a brief note that asks her to bring the violin her father gave her plus the ticket is only for her and not her ayah, Vanya.
Determined to find out what happened to her father, she travels alone, meeting and forming a friendship Jack and his ayah Feroz whose clergyman father is sending him to Westminster boarding school. Once in England, however, instead of meeting her father Naeli is taken to lodgings above a pie shop in London where she is put to work by the owner, Mrs Stevens, and her violin is stolen.
Alone in a strange country, Naeli must try to work out who has sent for her and why …
Jasbinder Bilan’s standalone historical adventure for readers aged 9+ is a mixed affair. I liked the fact that this is a story about bi-racial children with Indian and English heritage as it’s not something that gets covered a lot. Naeli is a plucky and determined character with a real gift for music and I liked her friendship with the confident Jack but the plot is episodic and for me missed emotional details that would have helped flesh it out.
I picked this up because I’m always interested in historical novels that bring something beyond the pale, English experience and Bilan’s book has that in abundance. I really liked the fact that both Naeli and Jack are children of the Empire, growing up in India and able to speak both English and Hindustani. However it is a shame that Bilan doesn’t look into the emotional impact of that heritage on them both, especially with Naeli who has in effect been abandoned by her white English father because I think that would have given her - and her determination to find him - some extra dimension. I also think that Jack is a little under-baked on the page, characterised by his hated of boarding school more than anything else and I wish there’d been more to him in terms of why he wants to support Naeli, who he only meets on the ship over to Southampton.
The story itself is episodic with Naeli moving from setting to setting in a way that feels patchy. This isn’t helped by the fact that Naeli’s uncle Daniel doesn’t appear until over 80 pages in and is thinly drawn with Bilan holding back the reason for his antagonism until the final quarter, at which point all the explanations that come are quite rushed. The antagonist is two-dimensional and I wanted more explanation for their actions and the decisions they take, not least because the central mystery seems to be fairly easy to solve.
None of this is to say that the book is bad - there is much to enjoy with Naeli herself - and there is a sense of pace here. Even though this book didn’t wholly work for me, I would nevertheless check out Bilan’s other work on the strength of it.
The Verdict:
Jasbinder Bilan’s standalone historical adventure for readers aged 9+ is a mixed affair. I liked the fact that this is a story about bi-racial children with Indian and English heritage as it’s not something that gets covered a lot. Naeli is a plucky and determined character with a real gift for music and I liked her friendship with the confident Jack but the plot is episodic and for me missed emotional details that would have helped flesh it out.
NAELI AND THE SECRET SONG was released in the United Kingdom on 5 June 2025. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
