{"id":36730,"date":"2014-12-29T08:55:59","date_gmt":"2014-12-29T13:55:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/?p=36730"},"modified":"2014-12-29T08:56:53","modified_gmt":"2014-12-29T13:56:53","slug":"a-bollywood-affair-by-sonali-dev","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/a-bollywood-affair-by-sonali-dev\/","title":{"rendered":"A Bollywood Affair by Sonali Dev"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Bollywood<\/a>Leaning toward something light, frothy, and just a little steamy for your next holiday season read? While the printed page is always<\/em> grand, going audible here is also highly recommended: I’m thinking Priya Ayyar<\/a> is quickly\u00a0becoming one of my favorite crisp voices to stick in the ears. Here she proves just how pitch-perfectly she can voice love at first sight, mutually mistaken identity, runaway lovers, meddling families, a dying mother longing to see her son one last time, and much more. Before you scoff and dismiss\u00a0Sonali Dev\u2019<\/a>s debut novel as merely too much fun, you’ll find effectively solemn moments dealing with child marriage, mixed-race issues, abuse, abandonment, and mental illness to ensure this is a thought-provoking indulgence.<\/p>\n

An Indian Air Force officer emerges from a coma with stinging first words for his younger brother: “If Rima isn’t my legal wife, that makes our child a bastard.” As a 12-year-old, Virat was wed to then 4-year-old Mili, in accordance with their village traditions. For two decades, the unlikely couple lived completely separated, never overlapping lives.<\/p>\n

Vinat married Rima, who is about to make him a father. All would have been fine if a legal claim hadn’t surfaced demanding ownership of the family’s ancestral home. Vinat, unable to travel, dispatches his younger brother Samir to America to find his alleged bride and force her to relinquish her wifely rights.<\/p>\n

Mili, meanwhile, insists she’s devotedly in love with\u00a0her stranger husband she hasn’t seen since she wept through her so-called wedding in utter fright. Hoping to present herself as the perfect partner\u00a0to an accomplished officer, she’s\u00a0managed to get herself into a graduate certificate program\u00a0in applied sociology\u00a0at Eastern Michigan University. What her scholarship doesn’t cover, she makes up for by being the best dishwasher at Panda Kong, even managing to send enough home to support her aging grandmother.<\/p>\n

When her roommate Ridhi runs off with her lover, Mili promises she won’t\u00a0share Ridhi’s whereabouts with aggressive family members. In this mode of high alert, Samir enters\u00a0Mili’s life; believing him to be one of Ridhi’s “brother-slash-cousins” hell-bent on answers, Mili attempts to flee, injuring her wrist and ankle seriously enough for an emergency room stay. Samir\u00a0\u2013 out of character with his Bollywood director-slash-womanizing cad reputation\u00a0\u2013 realizes he can’t abandon this damsel-slash-sort of-maybe-sister-in-law-in-distress, and becomes her not-so-temporary nursemaid.<\/p>\n

Queue violins, oh yes, but don’t expect the melodrama\u00a0to be without at least\u00a0a few complicated riffs.\u00a0With plenty of\u00a0twisty-turny\u00a0subplots to\u00a0keep the pages (and tracks) moving\u00a0quickly,\u00a0rest assured, this\u00a0Bollywood Affair<\/em> does Yash Raj Chopra<\/a> proud.<\/p>\n

Readers<\/strong>: Adult<\/p>\n

Published<\/strong>: 2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Leaning toward something light, frothy, and just a little steamy for your next holiday season read? While the printed page is always grand, going audible here is also highly recommended: I’m thinking Priya Ayyar is quickly\u00a0becoming one of my favorite crisp voices to stick in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36731,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,81,6,52,53,17,18],"tags":[6119,6608,59,10,11,51,13,145,6104,44,6118],"class_list":["post-36730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adult-readers","category-audio","category-fiction","category-indian","category-indian-american","category-south-asian","category-south-asian-american","tag-bollywood-affair","tag-bookdragon","tag-cultural-exploration","tag-family","tag-friendship","tag-identity","tag-love","tag-mixed-race-issues","tag-priya-ayyar","tag-siblings","tag-sonali-dev"],"yoast_head":"\nA Bollywood Affair by Sonali Dev - BookDragon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/a-bollywood-affair-by-sonali-dev\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Bollywood Affair by Sonali Dev - BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Leaning toward something light, frothy, and just a little steamy for your next holiday season read? 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