Indian girl moves to America. Falls in love with an American boy. Worries that her traditional family won’t accept him. Those three sentences pretty much sum up the entirety of this book, which had promise but fails to deliver in terms of creating three-dimensional characters. The first quarter of this novel consists of Priya, the main character, complaining about what a horrible person her mother is. The rest of the story gives her family similar treatment, reducing them to a collection of stereotypes. While these characterizations likely reveal a measure of truth about traditional Indian society, it would have been nice to see other dimensions of their personalities.

While I certainly understand where Priya is coming from - who wouldn’t be appalled by her grandfather’s belief that all white people are thieves? - I nevertheless felt that the way she dealt with her family was hypocritical at best. She criticizes her cousin for allowing their family to treat his wife poorly (because she is North Indian, not “their Indian”) yet doesn’t have the guts to tell her mother that she is engaged until after her mother arranges for her to meet a “nice Indian boy” to marry. Indeed, it’s not until after this “nice boy’s” family proposes marriage that Priya finally comes clean. Priya’s angst illuminated the pressures Indian women can face when torn between a traditional culture and Western ideals, yet with 229 pages of storyline one would have expected the author to incorporate more of a plot into the novel. Priya’s emails with her fiance are stilted and, at least to my American ears, it would have been helpful if the author had included a glossary at the end of the book to explain all of the Indian terms she incorporates into the narrative.