As readers, we tend to scrutinise books that describe the familiar. This is because we review such books twice over, first to absorb the plot and writing, and second to compare them to our own versions of reality. While reading Amrita Mahale’s debut novel Milk Teeth, I experienced this duality several times. A part of me read the fictionalised setup, the character arcs and their personal journeys as a dedicated reader; another moped, longing for and reminiscing what was once deeply familar—a city in which I had lived for the first 23 years of my life. The book’s strength lies in its portrayal of the everydayness of a middle-class Mumbai neighbourhood—its people, their relationships, their nostalgia for what has passed and their aspirations that often contradict this past. In bits, this is also the story of my home and neighbourhood in a different part of Mumbai, and perhaps that of many such microcosms in the city.