Scarlett Undone - Tasha Gold - ★★★.¼

AUTHOR: Tasha Gold

GENRE: Contemporary Fiction

PUBLICATION DATE: May 12, 2026

RATING: 3.25 stars.

In a Nutshell: A contemporary fiction containing romance, redemption, and revenge. Some good secondary characters, but the lead character has double standards. Nice storyline, but contains way more romance than I thought it would. Great representation of Jewish culture. Not a light read. Many triggers, including brutal animal death (though nothing harsh is described on page) and holocaust. An interesting novel that might work better if you don’t overthink as much as Scarlett and I do.

Plot Preview:

2018. USA. Thirty-year-old Scarlett has hidden her identity for most of her adult life. Even her husband Daniel doesn’t know her backstory. But when her uncle Arthur, her only true guardian in her younger years, suffers a health setback, she is forced to confront the past that she has ignored all this while, and return to his small-town home. The place also holds Brackson prison, a place that stirs up many difficult memories. Here, Scarlett needs to face not just the demons of the past but also the challenges of the present, including her floundering marriage.

The story comes to us in Scarlett’s first-person perspective.

Bookish Yays:

✔️ The focus on the Pups-in-Prison programme. I also loved all the dogs. And there are quite a few of them!

✔️ Many of the secondary characters. A special shoutout to Scarlett’s bestie Kenna and to Uncle Arthur. Emery was also interesting as the potential love interest though I couldn’t warm up much to him because of his background.

✔️ The details about Jewish culture and Judaism. To be clear, there are many anti-semitic comments and Scarlett too isn't a follower of her religion anymore. But the turnaround in her thinking and the representation of the culture comes out wonderfully.

✔️ The message about embracing your heritage, your roots. Jewish people might connect even more strongly with these scenes as they are from the Judaic perspective, but as someone coming from a country with a long, rich, and diverse cultural history, I always appreciate the thought of keeping our culture alive rather than assimilating too much into Western standardisation.

✔️ The plot structure, making excellent use of contemporary narration and flashbacks to develop the story gradually.

✔️ The multiple ways by which second chances are incorporated into the storyline, be it for love, faith, prisoners, dogs, heartbreaks,… The title has significance to this aspect, explained well in the storyline.

✔️ Many thought-provoking lines that are simple yet deep. Here’s one: “You can’t give a man a second chance if you’re worrying about how he ruined his first.”

✔️ The ending. Took me by happy surprise because I found it the most sensible development and I hadn’t seen it coming. I think this writing choice redeemed my rating to some extent.

Bookish Okays:

⚠ Scarlett. An overthinker of the highest order, which isn't the problem. The issue is that she's petty and judgemental, and at times, shallow as well. She frustrated me many times. But the thing is: no matter her flaws, she felt real because such people actually exist. I found her double standards ironic: judging her husband for possibly having secret lustful thoughts about a pretty neighbour while she herself feels an instant attraction to a guy in the prison, or lying to her husband all the time without regret while constantly wondering if he has been lying to her. Again, totally realistic human behaviour, so not really a red flag, just an annoying reminder of how fickle we are as humans. Scarlett thus is the rare kind of fictional character who might not always be likeable or relatable but always feels true to life.

⚠ Good potential comparison between city life and country life. A few scenes contain a discussion on which might be better and how not everyone is meant for the city/country. Again, very realistic. I just wish there had been more descriptions of the country setting. As a city lover, Scarlett’s first-person keeps her thoughts on the country’s description to the minimum, focussing more on its downside.

Bookish Nays:

❌ A multitude of themes, not all of which needed to be part of this storyline. The random inclusion of the holocaust and its horrors (described somewhat intensely) came out of nowhere, though later, it was fitted into the narrative as a part of Scarlett’s acceptance of her identity. I initially assumed that this was the result of typical debut-novelist tendency to overload the kitchen sink of themes. But I later discovered that this isn't a debut, unlike how it’s marketed. So no grace marks for this issue.

❌ Daniel’s character development – very lacking. There are barely any on-page interactions with him so for a long time, it's tough to decide what kind of a guy he is and if he deserves what Scarlett says about him.

❌ Some points are repeated too often. I was especially tired of hearing about Scarlett’s hairiness and her unibrow during her younger years. It was like a joke that stretched too far.

❌ Scarlett’s first-person POV sometimes includes unnecessary comments on random topics unrelated to the main plot. For instance, a discussion about neighbours suddenly swerved into an inner thought about how housewives “fritter away their days and bet it all on their husbands”. This might just be to reflect her personality but remarks like these feels judgemental and offensive. Some scenes are also needlessly preachy. And at times, there’s also overinclusion of Googled trivia.

❌ The romance track. The last thing I expected in a book with a married FMC was a romance subplot. 🤦🏻‍♀️ Worse, it was almost insta-love, which rarely works for me. Add to this, Scarlett’s aforementioned double standard where she begins a relationship with a man while still unsure of the state of her marriage. Worst, she begins this romance with a prisoner without even checking on the reason for his incarceration and often providing justifications for his past based on the assumptions she makes about his present behaviour. The Capricorn in me is horrified at this impractical approach!

❌ The unexpected animal cruelty. It caught me totally unawares. It is not graphic on the page but it is still a shocking development. To be fair, the blurb states that there is a detailed list of triggers on the author’s website (https://www.authortashagold.com/su-trigger-warnings) and at the start of the novel (missing in my ARC edition.) I usually don’t need trigger warnings, so I didn’t bother to look this up. My bad.

Overall, this is not at all a bad novel but it wasn’t what I thought it would be. I wanted a story about a woman who faces her past and learns to move on. That angle is tackled nicely, but I didn’t realise it would involve a romantic development as well. Further, Scarlett’s behaviour didn’t exactly endear me to her, though I must also accept that she is a good representative of typical human behaviour: using different standards to judge others than for herself.

This is marketed everywhere as a “debut book club novel”, but note that it isn't a debut novel. The author also writes contemporary romance and romantic comedies under an alternate pen name. (I wish I knew what it was!)

Recommended to readers who enjoy coming-of-age storylines with adult characters, and don’t mind unlikeable leads or romance or an undertone of preachiness.

My thanks to Xpresso Book Tours for providing the DRC of “Scarlett Undone” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

Content warnings in detail: (This list contains major spoilers.)

Antisemitism, racism, classism, miscarriage (occurs before the story begins), parental death, incarceration, parental abandonment, gang violence, sexual identity issues, bullying, marital discord, depression, infidelity, holocaust, violence against animals.