Disobedience Review: Is It Worth Reading?

Verdict: A thoughtful, award-winning novel about two women who loved each other as girls in Orthodox Jewish London and meet again after a rabbi’s death, held back by an ending that disappoints readers looking for a love story and a narrator some find abrasive.

Best for: Literary readers interested in faith, community and the cost of leaving, who want the women’s history handled with seriousness rather than as a romance.

Heat level: ★★☆☆☆ (2/5: there’s a physical relationship, but the book is about faith and community, not heat)

Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3.4/5: a 3.68 Goodreads average across about 14,000 ratings, pulled down by readers who wanted a different ending)

Tropes: Second chance, forbidden love, homecoming, religious community, estranged daughter, marriage of convenience, funeral, faith and doubt.

Disobedience is Naomi Alderman’s 2006 debut literary novel, and it follows Ronit, the estranged daughter of the rabbi of Hendon in North London, who comes home from New York for his funeral and finds Esti, the girl she loved as a teenager, married to the man expected to succeed him.

It sits at 3.68 across about 14,000 Goodreads ratings, won the 2006 Orange Award for New Writers, and became the 2017 film starring Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams. Readers mostly respect the book. Whether they love it depends on what they came for, and the film has brought in a lot of readers expecting a romance.

What Is Disobedience About?

This is a novel about a close-knit Orthodox Jewish community and what it means to belong to one, leave one, or stay. Alderman grew up in an Orthodox neighborhood, and readers say the community feels real. Each chapter opens with a passage of Torah commentary, so faith frames the story instead of serving only as the obstacle.

Ronit is sharp, defiant and often unkind, a woman who left and doesn’t regret it. Esti stayed, married Dovid, the rabbi’s nephew, and has kept her feelings quiet for years. The book moves between Ronit’s first-person voice and a closer look at Esti and Dovid’s life in the community, so you see both the leaving and the staying from the inside.

What Makes This Orthodox Jewish Novel Work

The community: Readers praise its texture. Even a 2-star reviewer said the characters’ relationships with Judaism felt rich and real.
The commentary openings: The Torah passages that start each chapter immerse readers in the community’s way of thinking.
Faith taken seriously: It doesn’t sneer at religion. Several readers call it enlightening about Orthodox life.
Prose: Fans praise the writing, and the book won the Orange Award for New Writers.
Esti and Dovid: Readers often find the quieter characters the most moving.

Book Synopsis

The rabbi of Hendon, the revered head of an Orthodox community in North London, has died. His only daughter, Ronit, hasn’t been part of that world for years. She lives in New York and has made a life that would scandalize everyone she grew up with. When the news reaches her, she goes home anyway.

The community isn’t glad to see her. Her father’s congregation is grieving, gossiping and quietly worried about what she’ll do. She’s staying with her cousin Dovid, the rabbi’s devoted student and likely successor. And Dovid is married to Esti, the girl Ronit loved when they were teenagers, the one she left behind.

As the days of mourning go on, old feelings come back for both women, and Ronit starts poking at the rules and silences that shaped her. Esti has built her whole adult life around keeping her heart quiet. The question is what each of them is willing to risk now that the past is in the same house.

My Review

The best thing about Disobedience is how fairly it treats the world it’s set in. It would have been easy to write the Orthodox community as a prison and Ronit as the hero who escaped. Alderman doesn’t do that. The community is warm and stifling, the faith is real, and staying is a choice with its own dignity.

The second strength is structure. Opening chapters with Torah commentary sounds like a gimmick, but readers say it works, putting you inside the logic of the people Ronit is fighting. The shifts between Ronit’s voice and the view of Esti and Dovid let the book argue with itself.

Where it struggles depends on the reader, but two complaints recur. The first is the ending. Readers who came for a love story, often after seeing the film, find it frustrating, and a few call it a cliché or say it doesn’t feel freeing. One 1-star reviewer went further and felt the book presents queerness as something to be hidden, which they found harmful for young LGBT readers. The second is Ronit, whom several readers find abrasive. A couple of critics also call the writing sophomoric and the characters flat archetypes, though fans say the opposite.

The expectation to reset is genre. The film puts the relationship between Ronit and Esti at the center. One 4-star reader noted the book focuses on it less. If you want a romance, you’ll likely be disappointed. If you want a serious novel about faith, community and desire, you’ll find a lot here.

My honest note: A smart, respectful novel that isn’t the love story its film made it look like. Read it for the community and the questions it asks, and skip it if you need a romantic ending.

Element	In Disobedience
Central relationship	Ronit and Esti: teenage lovers reunited, with Esti’s husband Dovid at the center too
Core tropes	Second chance, forbidden love, homecoming, religious community, faith and doubt
Setting	The Orthodox Jewish community of Hendon, North London
Heat level	2/5: a physical relationship, not explicit by reader reports
Series	Standalone, with no romance-style ending
Content notes	Death of a parent, grief, religious pressure, closeted sexuality, homophobia, a marriage without desire

How Spicy Is Disobedience?

Not very. Romance.io doesn’t list it, which fits a literary novel. Ronit and Esti’s relationship does have a physical side, but the book spends far more of its pages on faith, grief and community, and no reviewer we read describes anything explicit. The 2/5 reflects that the desire is real but not the focus.

What deserves a warning is the emotional framing. The book deals with closeted sexuality, a marriage without desire and a community that doesn’t make room for queer women, and its ending is the part readers argue about most. For similar restrained longing, Carol sits at 1/5, and The Last One looks at faith and queerness from a Muslim perspective at 2/5.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you’re interested in Orthodox Jewish life, you like literary novels that take faith seriously, you enjoy books that let characters stay rather than escape, and quiet, adult longing is enough for you.

You may want to skip it if: you want a romance with a happy ending, abrasive narrators bother you, you came because of the film’s love story, or endings that keep characters closeted are painful for you.

In short: a serious novel about faith and desire, not the romance its film suggests.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (October 2026)

This book has had two waves. It was a celebrated debut in 2006, winning the Orange Award for New Writers, and Alderman won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. Then in 2017, Sebastián Lelio’s film adaptation with Rachel Weisz, Rachel McAdams and Alessandro Nivola premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, and a movie tie-in cover brought a new audience. Alderman went on to win the Women’s Prize for Fiction for The Power. We didn’t find a BookTok or Reddit moment for the novel itself. On Amazon it holds 4.1 stars across about 2,800 ratings.

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Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The portrait of the community comes first, and readers call it enlightening and real. Then the Torah commentary that opens each chapter. Third is the moral seriousness: readers appreciate a book that doesn’t make faith the villain. A lot of its reviews are from Italian and other international readers, which shows how far it traveled after the film.

What readers argue about and complain about: The ending, above everything. Readers who wanted a love story object to where it leaves Esti, and one calls it a lazy cliché. Second: Ronit, who readers find harsh and hard to like. Third: the writing, which a couple of critics call sophomoric, with characters who are mouthpieces for ideas. The sharpest criticism is from a 1-star reviewer who felt the book presents homosexuality as something to be kept hidden. The real split is genre. Readers who came for literary fiction mostly admire it. Readers who came for sapphic romance mostly don’t.

The standalone question worth asking first: It’s a standalone. The 2017 film tells the same story with more focus on Ronit and Esti, and one Italian reader found the film a letdown after the book. If you like Alderman’s writing, The Power is her best-known novel, though it isn’t sapphic.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Disobedience a lesbian romance?

Not really. Ronit and Esti’s relationship is central, but it’s a literary novel about faith and community, and it doesn’t have a romance-style ending.

Is the Disobedience book different from the film?

Yes. Readers say the 2017 film focuses more on Ronit and Esti’s relationship than the book does. The book gives more space to the community, Torah commentary and Dovid.

Does Disobedience have a happy ending?

Not in the romance sense. The ending is the most debated part of the book, and readers hoping for the couple to end up together are often disappointed.

Did Disobedience win any awards?

Yes. It won the 2006 Orange Award for New Writers.

Is Disobedience spicy?

Not very. It’s a 2/5. The relationship has a physical side, but the book isn’t explicit and focuses on faith and community.

If You Loved Disobedience, Read These Next

For another novel about queer women and a religious family, The Last One tells it from a Muslim perspective in France. For restrained longing in a hostile world, Carol is the classic. And for a coming-of-age story inside a tight religious community, try Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion. Find more on the Jewish sapphic books page and in our Book Reviews.

The Bottom Line

Disobedience wants to show a community from the inside and ask what it costs to leave or stay. The community portrait, the commentary structure and the seriousness about faith work. The ending, the abrasive narrator and the gap between book and film don’t work for everyone. If you want literary fiction about faith and desire, it’s worth reading. Check Disobedience on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, Disobedience ranks as an award-winning literary novel about faith and queer desire. It’s thoughtful and fair to its world, held back by an ending many sapphic readers find painful. Read it for the community rather than for romance.