Ravishing

Surya debuts with an incendiary chronicle of two Indian American siblings who go to drastic lengths to improve their lives. Kashmira, a teen girl growing up in a South Jersey suburb, can’t stand looking in the mirror because of her resemblance to her verbally abusive father. At a house party, she runs into her friend Roshni, who’s now stunningly beautiful after using NuLook cream, with lighter skin, higher cheekbones, and a sharper nose. Unbeknownst to Kashmira, her estranged older brother, Nikhil, works for the cream’s maker, Evolvoir. In a parallel narrative, Nikhil, a recent college graduate, takes the job out of a misguided sense of altruism, hoping to help people conform to America’s seemingly unattainable beauty standards. Meanwhile, Roshni helps Kashmira get a supply of a new product called ReNuLook. The treatment works—so well that even as Roshni experiences troubling gastrointestinal side effects, Kashmira denies her own similar issues. Back at Evolvoir, Nikhil is unsettled by health concerns raised to him by a prominent influencer who’s using ReNuLook, prompting him to take action. Surya blends her stirring whistleblower plot with a heartrending depiction of Kashmira’s self-delusion, as when she forces herself, despite a severe stomachache, to leave the house and get her crush to notice her “second face” (“She wants to know how his pupils, dark and observant, will track the changes in her”). This one hits hard. Agents: Stephanie Delman and Dana Murphy, Trellis Literary Management. (Nov.)