For The Love of Apricots – Madhulika Liddle

A bottle of pickle, a jar of apricot jam, and a clump of stinging nettle—perfect ingredients for romance in sleepy Mukteshwar.

Forty-year-old divorcee Nandini is something of an oddity in the Himalayan small town of Mukteshwar where she has come to settle with her absent-minded birdwatcher father. Fiercely independent, strong-willed—she’s a woman you can’t take for a ride, which is how she has turned a homegrown pickle-making business into a successful women’s co-operative. When she encounters the newcomer Vikas Joshi, who has recently acquired an apricot orchard, sparks being to fly as a series of mishaps bring them together. It doesn’t look like this shy, gentle widower and the feisty pickle producer are made for each other. But destiny deems otherwise, with a little help from the villagers—and a mysterious jar of apricot jam. Played out against the backdrop of the Kumaon Hills, across wooded mountains and apricot orchards, For the Love of Apricots is a quietly romantic, humorous story about a seemingly headstrong yet vulnerable heroine and a lonely man who realize, before it’s too late, that love deserves a second chance. Warm and light-hearted, yet sensitive and with an understanding of human nature at its core, this is a book to celebrate love in all its unpredictable ways.