Love is Love (Review: A Bollywood Affair)

ABATitle: A Bollywood Affair

Author: Sonali Dev

Published: 2014

Read in: May 2016

Remember how I said I expect kind of the same formula in romance novels I pick up? It’s like going to Starbucks. No matter where you are, or how foreign or out of place you feel, you pretty much know what you’re going to get and you’re going to enjoy it. If you’re lucky you might learn something knew. This novel is the perfect example.

Two sentence summary: Hotshot Bollywood director is forced to go to America to inform the woman who thinks she’s married to director’s brother, actually isn’t. Just imagine what comes next in this book that won last year’s RITA award for “Best First Book.”

I picked this up mainly because a) it won a RITA and b) I was heading on a short road trip to my first Hindu wedding and wanted something to read that sort of mirrored the mood.

The protagonist, despite growing up in a traditional rural village, somehow manages to educate herself and make her way to America (Ypsilanti, Michigan!) for further education. Her potential suitor, a bastard child with an abusive young childhood somehow manages to defy the odds and becomes a successful Bollywood film director and, what a surprise that the two meet in the most unforeseen circumstances. There’s mistaken identity, hidden identity, quirky/insane best friend, road trip, mysteries of a lost mother revealed, pretty much all of the ingredients that makes a successful romance.

That the two people who fall in love are Indian, speak a different language and observe different cultures but all the more makes you realize that romance is romance, and crosses cultural divides quite easily (at least when it comes to romance fiction, it does).

If you’re always reading about white people falling in love with other white people, definitely give this one a chance. You’ll be surprised at how not surprised you are.

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