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Summary
Summary
Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year ● NPR Best Books of the Year ● Amazon Fall Reading Selection ● Goodreads Best Romances of the Month ● International Dublin Literary Award Longlist
"A fresh new voice."
-Susan Elizabeth Phillips, New York Times bestselling author
Ria Parkar is Bollywood's favorite Ice Princess-beautiful, poised, and scandal-proof-until one impulsive act threatens to expose her destructive past. Traveling home to Chicago for her cousin's wedding offers a chance to diffuse the coming media storm and find solace in family, food, and outsized celebrations that are like one of her vibrant movies come to life. But it also means confronting Vikram Jathar.
Ria and Vikram spent childhood summers together, a world away from Ria's exclusive boarding school in Mumbai. Their friendship grew seamlessly into love-until Ria made a shattering decision. As far as Vikram is concerned, Ria sold her soul for stardom and it's taken him years to rebuild his life. But beneath his pent-up anger, their bond remains unchanged. And now, among those who know her best, Ria may find the courage to face the secrets she's been guarding for everyone else's benefit-and a chance to stop acting and start living.
Rich with details of modern Indian-American life, here is a warm, sexy, and witty story of love, family, and the difficult choices that arise in the name of both.
Author Notes
Sonali Dev's first literary work was a play about mistaken identities performed at her neighborhood Diwali extravaganza in Mumbai. She was eight years old. Despite this early success, Sonali spent the next few decades getting degrees in architecture and written communication, migrating across the globe, and starting a family while writing for magazines and websites. With the advent of her first gray hair her love for telling stories returned full force, and she now combines it with her insights into Indian culture to conjure up stories that make a mad tangle with her life as supermom, domestic goddess, and world traveler. Sonali is an active member of RWA and WFWA. She lives in the Chicago suburbs with her very patient and often amused husband and two teens who demand both patience and humor, and the world's most perfect dog. Visit her on the web at sonalidev.com.
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Dev (A Bollywood Affair) replaces true connection with overdone drama in this middling contemporary romance. Bollywood star Ria, who lives and works in Mumbai, returns to Chicago for the first time in 10 years for her cousin's wedding. There she meets Vikram, with whom she was in a serious relationship as an adolescent, and the two of them have to deal with the brutal way Ria broke up with him at the start of her film career. Ria had reasons beyond the attractions of stardom to consider herself ineligible for a relationship, and those reasons intrude between the two as they rekindle their romance. The cultural details of Mumbai and of Chicago's Indian immigrant community are well-handled, and the book's attitude toward mental illness is an interesting cross between Indian and American social norms. But a lack of real communication between the lovers renders the plot unbelievable, and it never acquires any emotional weight. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Library Journal Review
Ria Parker has avoided going home to Chicago for far too long, offering up convenient excuses about her demanding Bollywood career. With her beloved more-brother-than-cousin's impending wedding, Ria finally heads stateside from Mumbai to face the family. For ten years, she's managed to avoid first-and-only-love Vikram, thinking that she's saved him from a miserable future looming with insanity. But when she meets him and his new girlfriend-virtually in flagrante in the family basement-running away this time proves impossible. Dev (Bollywood Affair) continues her bicultural Bollywood streak, albeit this time adding more steam than substance. Attempts at inclusion of weightier fare-a Chinese American adoptee who grew up in foster care, mental illness, cultural appropriation, social justice-feel clumsy and misplaced. Thankfully, versatile Priya Ayyar with her mellifluously fluent accents switches seamlessly from sibling banter and adoring older servants to overwrought sex scenes and dancing aunties without missing a beat. Where better editing might have erased dozens of unnecessary pages as the gorgeous-but-flat characters play out their inevitably predictable plot, Ayyar manages to entertain listeners. VERDICT Recommended for fans of the author. ["Both a sexy love story and an exploration of how a tormented young woman learns to overcome family turmoil and look forward to a future with the man she loves": LJ 10/1/15 review of the Kensington pb.]-Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.