Author: Mansi Shah
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 3 out of 5
Pages: 317
Date Started: 1 September 2022
Date Finished: 20 September 2022
I randomly picked this book from the library. I should say that the story sounded interesting and I was not sure of what the title meant, so decided to gamble!
After her parents moved her and her brother to America, Preeti Desai never meant to tear her family apart. All she did was fall in love with a white Christian carnivore instead of a conventional Indian boy. Years later, with her parents not speaking to her and her controversial relationship in tatters, all Preeti has left is her career at a prestigious Los Angeles law firm.
But when Preeti receives word of a terrible accident in the city where she was born, she returns to India, where she’ll have to face her estranged parents…and the complicated past they left behind. Surrounded by the sights and sounds of her heritage, Preeti catches a startling glimpse of her family’s battles with class, tradition, and sacrifice. Torn between two beautifully flawed cultures, Preeti must now untangle what home truly means to her. (Excerpt from Goodreads)
There were no favorite characters as such in this book, which kind of surprised me! All the characters are there for a reason and play their parts. I sometimes felt that there were too many characters and some of them for no apparent reason!
This was an interesting book. The story was gripping in the beginning, and eventually lost its grip and just became a rambling of all the characters. I was expecting something fabulous out of the story initially but looks like the author did not have much, and kept going around the caste system to fill the pages. I had to finish this book because I wanted to know the reasons behind some of the incidents mentioned, and how the story would end. The end really caught me by surprise and felt that the story deserved that.
Favorite lines from the book:
I smiled at her. “I know. The greatest privilege of being born at the top is that you never have to think about how to get there.
Countries are like people - you have to accept all sides of them.
Maybe the rest of us were so restless because we were searching for that feeling of belonging that Tushar already had.
It is better to fail at the right thing than to succeed at the wrong one.
Acceptance and belonging were moving targets.
