About the Book
After a shocking phone call from her mother, Reeva Mehta’s life starts to sound like the plot of a Bollywood drama. From the outlandishly funny author of 30 Things I Love About Myself comes a hilarious, heartwarming novel about love, family, and new beginnings.
Thirty-four-year-old Reeva thought her life couldn’t possibly get more complicated, until her semi-famous Bollywood mother calls to tell her that she’s been lying to her daughters for decades—the father they thought died thirty years ago has been alive this whole time. Only now he actually is dead. Worse? His dying wish was for Reeva and her sisters Sita and Jaya to attend his funeral prayers—which means spending a fortnight together at his house, surrounded by relatives they never knew existed.
Reeva already has more than enough going on in her life. She’s an overworked London lawyer, her hair is falling out due to stress-induced alopecia, she can’t decide if her new boyfriend, Nick, is really as wonderful as he appears to be, and her brand-new cat is playing hard to get (even for a cat). And now she has to spend two weeks with the sisters she hasn’t spoken to since Jaya stole her boyfriend and Sita took her side.
But as Reeva slowly learns more about their father and his life—with the help of his sister, aka her new, wise Satya Auntie—she starts to uncover the complicated truth of their past…and realizes she needs Jaya and Sita more than she ever could have imagined.
My Review
I have also read 30 Things I Love About Myself from this author, so when I saw another novel pop up in my review requests, I had to take it on. Once again, I found myself invested right away, following Reeva when her life is in some serious turmoil. Her father is not actually dead like she’s thought for years, she can’t decide if the guy she is seeing is legit, and she’s about to spend time with her sisters – one of whom stole her long-time boyfriend just a few years prior, and they are still happily together. Reeva says good-bye to her finicky cat and heads to her deceased father’s home to partake in Hindu traditions, and the drama continues to escalate from there. Her sisters are as miserable as ever, her very non-Hindu boyfriend shows up in the middle of it all, and she gets into a fight with her best friend. In the midst of all of that, Reeva uncovers a family secret that explains why the sisters were lied to about their father’s whereabouts – and it’s nothing that she could have imagined.
What I could appreciate about this story is that it’s actually somewhat dark and full of drama in every chapter, yet somehow reads light-hearted. I have no idea how that worked out, but it made for an interesting duality while reading. All of the characters are quite flawed – except perhaps the newly found Satya Auntie, who I adored, but again somehow had little traits that made me like them, even Stia and Jaya. The cheating storyline was one that really fascinated me because how does a family bounce back from such a huge betrayal, but the bigger plot twist was what really happened to Reeva’s father that caused such a rift in the family. Again, it can actually get quite dark at times but it never felt too heavy to keep reading. I liked that there were modern parts of the story – like the sisters sharing intimate details with one another that gave me an eyebrow raise – and overall I really enjoyed that is made me laugh, tear up, and think about what I would do in certain situations. It felt authentic, a bit messy, but was also clever and Radhika Sanghani clearly has a gift for story-telling.
4 stars
