Today iit’s my turn on the blog tour for Straight As A Jalebi. My review is written with thanks to Zoe O’Farrell for inviting me on the tour and to the author for providing my copy of the book.

Blurb:

Who knew that an innocent trip to India in the year 2000 would have such an impact on his life?

Sunny had only gone as a chaperone for his sister and her best friend and to attend to a few business matters.

He’d ended up with a deal that would change the shape of his professional future and possibly his personal one too.

Battling the pressures of marriage by his family isn’t Sunny’s only fight, as he finds his feelings for a certain ‘friend’ may be more than just friendship.

But how can he tell anyone how he truly feels?
Because the road to love isn’t always straight…

Ritu Bhathal is a fresh, new, and much-needed voice for British Asian fiction.

Straight As a Jalebi is Book 2 in the Rishtay Series, following the Gill family in the new millennium.

Book 3 Due out in 2024.

Review:

I read Marriage Unarranged last year and loved it, so I was really pleased to have the opportunity to read Straight As A Jalebi and spend more time with these wonderfully vibrant characters. Straight As A Jalebi starts where Marriage Unarranged left off, and focuses on Sunny and his burgeoning same sex relationship with Milan. Although we see less of Aashi, Kiran and Arjun, they still play an important part in the story and I love the dynamic between them and the humour in their banter. There are also some characters we have not met before, in particular, Priya and Harpreet, and I enjoyed getting to know them and discovering their stories. 

Straight As A Jalebi is set in a traditional Indian culture, where men and women have traditional roles and there is an expectation on the young characters that they will marry. However, it quickly becomes clear that this is not the route that Sunny wishes to take. Ritu Bhathal is a very talented writer and I love the way she writes about Sunny and Milan’s relationship as I could feel the emotions of the characters and the inner conflict pouring from the page. I became totally enthralled by their story and was hoping they would both find happiness. 

I don’t have a great deal of knowledge of Indian culture, and I love the way that the author shares her own knowledge and experience in such an accessible way, so that not only is the novel entertaining but we learn something too. 

There is a further book in this series due out next year and Ritu Bhathal has definitely given us plenty of reasons to come back. I can’t wait! 

Straight As A Jalebi is available from Amazon.

You can follow the rest of the blog tour here: