Bella and Rami
Sign In or Register Now to see if this title is available for request.
Buy on Bookshop.org Buy on WaterstonesSend NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app
1
To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
2
Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.
Pub Date 22 Sep 2026 | Archive Date 7 Oct 2026
Talking about this book? Use #BellaandRami #NetGalley. More hashtag tips!
Description
One fair-skinned girl. One dark-skinned boy. One passion that lasts a lifetime.
Bella is an Australian schoolgirl living in 1980s India. Rami is an athlete just out of college, about to start life abroad. From the start, their connection is powerful and physical. As they navigate distance, family, trauma, and complicated lives, first love becomes something deeper, more complex, something impossible to forget.
When Rami disappears abruptly from Bella’s life, she is filled with foreboding. Has something happened? Is he okay? To find answers, she must return to the past and confront the shadows that shaped her. She must also find Rami and ask him to tell his story.
Lyrical, intimate, and emotionally fearless, Bella & Rami is a sweeping romance about the intensity of youth, the adversities of life, and a rare love that endures long after the first embrace.
A Note From the Publisher
Isobel de Border is a diarist and writer of autofiction. She crafts stories from life. Bella & Rami is her debut novel.
Advance Praise
"Anyone looking for a coming-of-age love story with a more grown-up edge will want to read this. There's a reason people say, "Absence makes the heart grow fonder." This novel explores that idea while also showing that love alone doesn't erase the challenges created by distance and time." — Readers' Favorite
"A sweeping international romance and deeply rooted love story told by two world-weary adults who are still kids at heart [...] Book clubs will find much to discuss with Bella & Rami, as will fans of women’s fiction. When it comes to being in love, no one does it better than young people, and people who used to be young." — Independent Book Review
"What gives Bella & Rami its lasting force is de Border’s commitment to memory in all its untidy forms. The novel is confessional, reflective, and often intensely private, but its broader subject is the way a life changes when the past is revisited instead of simply remembered [...] Bella & Rami is a novel about first love becoming part of a lifetime, about the stories people construct from incomplete knowledge, and about the possibility that returning to the past with greater understanding can transform what that past means." — Literary Titan
Marketing Plan
Press Release/One-Sheet
Goodreads book page
Social media outreach
Atmosphere Press newsletter feature
Live virtual events
Customized book announcement email
Kirkus/Publishers Weekly reviews
Editorial reviews
Amazon advertising
Award submissions
Strategy calls with publicist
NetGalley campaign
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9798901744048 |
| PRICE | $19.99 (USD) |
| PAGES | 364 |