Book Review: "Leave and Come Back" by Lavanya Lakshmi

If you love Bollywood musicals or at least Bollywood dancing, you’ll understand why I say that this book would be so fantastic to see onscreen. The imagery that Lavanya Lakshmi used, to describe the outfits, the food, the dancing, were so vivid but I know they’d be incredible to actually see.

Simran loves her life in Toronto. She works for a university but teaches an afterschool dance class. She lives with Liv, her college roommate. She has also just started dating Liv’s brother Leo after the two of them have been flirting for years. But as happy as she is, there’s a hole in her heart. She’s been estranged from her aunt, uncle, and cousins—who adopted her when her parents died—for seven years.

Her younger cousin is about to get married, and Simran is torn about whether to return to New Jersey. Her older cousin and (former) best friend Kavitha convinces her to come—for the full two weeks of wedding festivities. When Leo accidentally crashes the engagement party—and makes an enemy of Veena parima, Simran’s judgmental aunt and the family matriarch, disaster is about to strike.

But the cousins come up with a scheme, modeled after their favorite Bollywood movie, DDLJ. They’re going to pretend Leo is a stranger to Simran and give him the time to ingratiate himself with the family, the community, and Veena. Sounds easy, right?

I thought this was such a fun debut novel. Sure, it’s predictable, and miscommunication isn’t my favorite thing, but there are a lot of themes here that brought emotion and insight to the plot. It was a great example of how a community comes together to honor its own, and how everyone is in everyone’s business.

Book Review: "How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder" by Nina McConigley

“To have freedom, there is always a fight. Sometimes you lose part of yourself. Sometimes you gain something altogether different from what you thought. And sometimes which side is right and which side is wrong gets all muddled together.”

You know me and books with cool titles! This is one of those books that deals with a very serious subject but tries to put a humorous spin on it. It’s an interesting approach but I think it lessened the overall power of the story.

Agatha and Georgie are sisters growing up in rural Wyoming in 1986. Their American father is often absent, working for an oil company. When their relatives—their uncle, aunt, and young cousin—arrive from India, they are very excited to see family and learn more about their Indian culture.

But shortly after their family arrives, both sisters are repeatedly molested by their uncle. He warns them that if they tell anyone, no one will believe them and he and his family will have to go back to India, which will devastate their lonely mother. So at that point Agatha and Georgie decide their uncle has to die.

Their plan to kill their uncle is juxtaposed with a look at how this changes the relationship between the sisters. The plot also meanders through anecdotes of their family’s history, India’s independence, the history of Wyoming, the oil industry, and other topics, and is intercut with magazine quizzes about love and other emotions.

When the book focuses on the actual story, it’s very powerful and emotional. But all of the detours quickly frustrated me. One or two might have been interesting, but after a while, I just wanted the book to stop being clever and coy.

Book Review: "Eating & Praying" by Davis Summers

Tyler was a force to be reckoned with in the entertainment field. Before the age of 30, he had produced six movies (one that was nominated for Best Picture) and a television show. But the job came at a cost—his ego-driven, workaholic, hard-drinking ways led to the end of his relationship with his boyfriend, Leo.⁣

⁣ Suddenly he’s an emotional wreck and nothing seems to matter anymore. He prays for a sign, some guidance about what to do next, and he finds it: blog posts from a woman who has been living her own Eat Pray Love journey. So he quits his job and decides to go to Italy, India, and Bali, so he can find his purpose again.⁣

⁣ Italy fills him with life, great food, emotional connections, and, much to his surprise, even some romance. But through his time there, he also keeps feeling that something is missing, something that keeps waking him up in the middle of the night.⁣

⁣ By the time he reaches India to spend 30 days in an ashram, he’s worn down emotionally and his extravagance has burned through his savings. Finding himself literally kept out of the ashram, he must begin a long journey back to the airport. And on a hike he was ill-prepared for, he finally begins to confront the issues that have been plaguing him, realizing that the problems he was addressing were masking others.⁣

⁣ Wouldn’t it be amazing to have the chance to re-evaluate your life against historical backdrops, to confront what’s ailing you emotionally? This was a fun and thought-provoking concept, while at the same time, it addresses bigger issues such as unresolved grief, the need for love and acceptance, and realizing where your mistakes lie.⁣

⁣ There’s even a fun meta moment when Tyler is at a restaurant that Julia Roberts went to in Eat Pray Love, and he’s recreating that experience!⁣ ⁣

Book Review: "Keya Das's Second Act" by Sopan Deb

This was a poignant story about forgiving yourself and finding the strength to move forward.

One day, much to the surprise of her Bengali parents and older sister, 18-year-old Keya came out to her family. Their reactions hurt, disappointed, and angered her, but they never found the opportunity to apologize to Keya, as she died shortly thereafter.

Years later, Keya's father Shantanu lives alone. His marriage is over and he doesn’t speak to his other daughter, Mitali, that often. One day he finds boxes in the attic, and one contains notes Keya wrote to her then-girlfriend as well as a play that the two young women had written.

When Mitali suggests that the family stage the play as a tribute to Keya, it is seen as a chance to make amends in a small way for the way Keya felt when she died. And as the production of the play progresses, it represents a chance for each of Keya's family members, who have been mired in grief and guilt for some time, to take tentative steps toward a new start as well.

This was a really well-told and emotionally rich story. I found myself really hooked on these characters and rooting for them to succeed. I felt like there was one thread, related to the man that Mitali is dating, which seemed extraneous and didn’t advance the story much, but I wasn’t too distracted by it.

Having grown up in the New Jersey suburbs, I loved the mention of lots of familiar places. I also was impressed that this is Sopan Deb’s debut novel and I look forward to seeing what comes next in his career.

Book Review: "The Other Man" by Farhad J. Dadyburjor

In The Other Man, boy meets girl…and then he meets boy.

At age 38, Ved is truly an eligible bachelor. He’s handsome (many say he resembles George Clooney), he’s smart, and he is in line to run his family’s electronics empire. His mother knows any woman would be lucky to have him as a husband, and she’s determined to find him a suitable wife. She doesn’t understand why he keeps rejecting all the women she suggests!

The thing is, Ved doesn’t want to disappoint his mother, but he is living as a closeted gay man. Being gay is a crime in India, and he knows that telling his parents the truth will break their hearts. He has already fallen in love and had his heart broken once, so what’s the point anyway?

But to keep the peace, he agrees to go out with the vivacious Disha. She’s smart, beautiful, independent, and her family could be an excellent business connection. He’d be foolish not to get engaged—who cares if he doesn’t love her?

And then he meets Carlos, an American vacationing in Mumbai. Carlos is everything he could want, and he feels alive whenever he’s with him. With Carlos he dreams of a life he never thought he could have, and he’s finally ready to take the first step. But there’s the small matter of his engagement…

This was a sweet, thought-provoking story, one which so many LGBTQIA+ people all over the world have dealt with. It’s a reminder that it’s sometimes so much harder to find the courage to live the life you want instead of the one others want you to live. I'll admit I wasn't completely enamored of Ved's behavior in the book, but I can't say I blame him.