Full joint review at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books 
 The Bollywood Bride is Sonali Dev's second novel. We were crazy about her first novel, A Bollywood Affair. The Bollywood Bride is more ambitious in emotional scope and much darker. It has the same joyful celebration of Indian and Indian-American culture that made Bollywood Affair so much fun - there's a lot of food, extended family, and shopping for saris and sherwanis. 
 Overall, though, the book works less well as a romance than it does as an exploration of trauma. Trigger warning for almost everything - child abuse, sexual abuse, harassment (sexual and otherwise), and mental health issues and cultural barriers to treatment. This isn't a light-hearted romp, but it is very well-written. 
 CarrieS: My super short review is, As a novel, this book is great, but as a romance novel, it's not as good because the hero is not terribly convincing as a character. It's interesting that we don't get his point of view directly. That would have helped, because his character swings back and forth a lot between angel and jerk. 
 RHG: Yeah, it's.... it's kind of old school in that way? We get very little of the hero's POV and it's all about her. And yet decidedly neo-classic in that the trauma the heroine goes through has actual lasting consequences that aren't fixed by magic wang. 
 CarrieS: I definitely wouldn't recommend this to people who say they read romance primarily for escape. It was grueling. At times I felt like I was just watching Ria being kicked (metaphorically) in the head over and over again. When it was over, I didn't have good book sigh so much as I had that washed out feeling like I get after a really tough therapy session. But as a book about trauma, extended family, and cultural issues around mental illness I thought it was very good. 
 And I did love how the food and the fabrics brought some joy and levity to the story. I am so hungry right now - also I want Ria to take me shopping! 
 One thing I liked was that a lot of the characters acted in surprising but believable ways - people were complex. I liked it that Mira was a sympathetic character, and that the author didn't go the easy route by having Ria's romantic rival be a villain. 
 But I was upset that the major antagonist was so vile because I thought the story would have been more interesting and believable if she had been a more nuanced character. Given her age, her culture, and what she knows about Ria's backstory, she could have been written in a way that showed that yeah, she should respect her son's decisions, but also she could have had actual valid things to worry about. 
 RHG: The strength of the book was showing how these subsets of family all worked with and around each other. I especially loved Ria's relationship with Uma and the rest of her aunties (God, I loved the aunties so much), and how they tried to give her as much stability as they could without the messiness of actually talking about what the problems were. 
 But I need Ria to get help. I really did. I needed someone to see that she was holding on by her fingernails and HELP HER. 
 - Redheadedgirl & Carrie S.