The Forbidden Book
by Sacha Lamb
Middle School, High School    Levine/Levine Querido    256 pp.
10/24    9781646144563    $19.99
ebook ed.  9781646144822    $13.99

“On a full moon night, after a day of fasting, the young bride Sorel Kalmans leapt from a window and left her life behind.” Seventeen-year-old Sorel is betrothed to the rebbe’s son, a rather milquetoast character, but something compels her to flee. That something turns out to be both her own impulse and an otherworldly force, which is revealed partway through this unique and absorbing novel. Disguised as a boy, she doubles back to her own pre-wedding “beggars’ feast” and encounters a young peddler, Sam, who helps protect her from the city guards after a case of mistaken identity (or is it?) gone wrong. The two are joined by a third ally, revolution-minded Adela, in helping find the missing boy whom Sorel so resembles. There are many gripping twists and turns, along with dubious motivations, questions of faith and orthodoxy, friendship, identity (gender and otherwise)—and a stolen book that was “written by an angel, with its own hand.” Says Sam: “Paradise is a book…a place built of the same Hebrew letters that built the world. No book a human hand could write contains all of Paradise, but a book that captures even one chapter of it can change the world.” In this worthy follow-up to When the Angels Left the Old Country (rev. 1/23), Lamb ­demonstrates a deep commitment to this heady idea while crafting another page-turning and ­un-put-downable narrative.

From the "September/October 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.