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3.26 AVERAGE
3.26 AVERAGE
some repetitive descriptions and wasn't that interested in all the character vignettes. had higher hopes for this!
Destination Wedding is a typical Big Fat Indian wedding with a “masala” twist as we call it! Read it while you’re travelling or having a cup of tea enjoying your evening or with a glass of wine, this book fits all your moods.
Tina, an American Indian born and raised in the States, has always struggled to belong there and while her work and extended family brings her closer to her roots in India, she isn’t too sure if she’d fit there too.
Tina with her best friend Marianne, her mother Radha, Radha’s American boyfriend David Smith, and her dad Neel Das are all travelling to India for a close wedding. They reach their destination in Delhi and through the cast of these characters, we get to see their lives, relationships and culture and live their stories.
Be it Marianne, always looking for a spark in men and unsure about the “normal” she’s about to settle for or Radha, who after years of marriage and divorce knows her heart isn’t the one for commitment but only longs companionship, or Mr Das who takes a leap and decides to go for a date arranged by a matchmaker.
Glamorous, witty and a light hearted read driven by the stories of these characters and how they find themselves with their unusualness.
What did not work for me was that I wasn’t totally invested in the main character(s), didn’t care for their little too extravagant problems and felt that they were underdeveloped.
This isn’t something I’d usually go for, but I did enjoy some moments with Mr Das and Mrs Sethi, Nono and Rajesh.
Tina, an American Indian born and raised in the States, has always struggled to belong there and while her work and extended family brings her closer to her roots in India, she isn’t too sure if she’d fit there too.
Tina with her best friend Marianne, her mother Radha, Radha’s American boyfriend David Smith, and her dad Neel Das are all travelling to India for a close wedding. They reach their destination in Delhi and through the cast of these characters, we get to see their lives, relationships and culture and live their stories.
Be it Marianne, always looking for a spark in men and unsure about the “normal” she’s about to settle for or Radha, who after years of marriage and divorce knows her heart isn’t the one for commitment but only longs companionship, or Mr Das who takes a leap and decides to go for a date arranged by a matchmaker.
Glamorous, witty and a light hearted read driven by the stories of these characters and how they find themselves with their unusualness.
What did not work for me was that I wasn’t totally invested in the main character(s), didn’t care for their little too extravagant problems and felt that they were underdeveloped.
This isn’t something I’d usually go for, but I did enjoy some moments with Mr Das and Mrs Sethi, Nono and Rajesh.
Destination Wedding by Diksha Basu
I finally finished this book after wanting to put it down at the end of each chapter. I don’t like writing harsh reviews but here goes…
Destination Wedding is essentially just that, except not sure why it’s called a destination wedding when the wedding takes place in the bride-groom’s home country and that too in their very own Colebrookes Club? The story follows the family of Tina Das, her parents Neel and Radha Das who are long divorced, Tina’s best friend Marianne and literally every character in the novel. The book is set over a week’s time and covers the wedding of Shefali and Pavan, plus the lives of each of the guests.
Let me just say - there’s no real promising premise. I fully expected just a no-brainer rom-com, Bollywood kinda story, but unfortunately it was barely that. For starters, there’s just too much going on in the story. Every character is given a subplot and is just draining. Nothing really happens, the story just goes on and on.
It attempts to showcase the chaos of Indian weddings but instead it just misses it all. It doesn’t capture the sanctity and importance of wedding rituals, the coming together of families nor the excitement behind it all. What it rather captures is girls and guys trying to get with each other, alcohol and drugs, and the rich. Apart from the interactions between Sid and Tina, there is no real regard given to socioeconomic issues. There was a mention of an LGBTQI+ character but that’s all it was. Some subplots were also unrealistic, for instance that of Neel and Radha.
As for the characters, I despised almost every single character! There were way too many characters involved and the constant change in point-of-views/narrators drove me insane. For example, Tina is trying to cross the road and we are presented with hers, the car driver’s and other driver’s point-of-views on what they think of her road-crossing skills. This was totally unnecessary!! Apart from this, the main characters were so shallow and self-absorbed. Tina, the main character, wanted so badly to fit into the Indian culture and put on this facade that she doesn’t disparage the poor. She herself was very confused and her constant change in mind made it really hard for me as a reader to stay connected.
Even the bridge-groom were shallow and again showed no respect for Indian wedding rituals, it was such a joke! The only character I liked was Mr Das
I don’t live in India but was born there and do consider myself Indian. With that authority, I don’t think this book really captures India. Maybe this was not the intention and perhaps it was just to capture the high society life.
I would not recommend this book but if you do pick it up, don’t expect much. I would say it’s more of a young adult fiction (noting here that the characters are in their 30s but they’re just immature).
In saying that, I appreciate this would’ve been a feat of a book to write given all the characters and all the chaos. This is not to discredit the author’s work.
I finally finished this book after wanting to put it down at the end of each chapter. I don’t like writing harsh reviews but here goes…
Destination Wedding is essentially just that, except not sure why it’s called a destination wedding when the wedding takes place in the bride-groom’s home country and that too in their very own Colebrookes Club? The story follows the family of Tina Das, her parents Neel and Radha Das who are long divorced, Tina’s best friend Marianne and literally every character in the novel. The book is set over a week’s time and covers the wedding of Shefali and Pavan, plus the lives of each of the guests.
Let me just say - there’s no real promising premise. I fully expected just a no-brainer rom-com, Bollywood kinda story, but unfortunately it was barely that. For starters, there’s just too much going on in the story. Every character is given a subplot and is just draining. Nothing really happens, the story just goes on and on.
It attempts to showcase the chaos of Indian weddings but instead it just misses it all. It doesn’t capture the sanctity and importance of wedding rituals, the coming together of families nor the excitement behind it all. What it rather captures is girls and guys trying to get with each other, alcohol and drugs, and the rich. Apart from the interactions between Sid and Tina, there is no real regard given to socioeconomic issues. There was a mention of an LGBTQI+ character but that’s all it was. Some subplots were also unrealistic, for instance that of Neel and Radha.
As for the characters, I despised almost every single character! There were way too many characters involved and the constant change in point-of-views/narrators drove me insane. For example, Tina is trying to cross the road and we are presented with hers, the car driver’s and other driver’s point-of-views on what they think of her road-crossing skills. This was totally unnecessary!! Apart from this, the main characters were so shallow and self-absorbed. Tina, the main character, wanted so badly to fit into the Indian culture and put on this facade that she doesn’t disparage the poor. She herself was very confused and her constant change in mind made it really hard for me as a reader to stay connected.
Even the bridge-groom were shallow and again showed no respect for Indian wedding rituals, it was such a joke! The only character I liked was Mr Das
I don’t live in India but was born there and do consider myself Indian. With that authority, I don’t think this book really captures India. Maybe this was not the intention and perhaps it was just to capture the high society life.
I would not recommend this book but if you do pick it up, don’t expect much. I would say it’s more of a young adult fiction (noting here that the characters are in their 30s but they’re just immature).
In saying that, I appreciate this would’ve been a feat of a book to write given all the characters and all the chaos. This is not to discredit the author’s work.
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Destination Wedding, which has been repeatedly compared - sometimes favorably (!) - to [b:Crazy Rich Asians|16085481|Crazy Rich Asians (Crazy Rich Asians, #1)|Kevin Kwan|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1364852559l/16085481._SY75_.jpg|21571970] does justice to the comparison, but only occasionally.
The story is of Tina Das, an NYC-based 30-something TV producer of Indian origin, who has been having second thoughts about almost everything in her life. She can't make up her mind as to whether being in India is good for her or not, or whether her parents' divorce was good for her or not, or whose fault it was, or how should she react to it (even though it's been nearly a decade since her parents decided to separate!), or which subject would work best for her next show, or should she think of settling down, who does she love, does she love anyone? should she? could she?
You get the drift.
Occasionally funny, though not so much in the first half, the book takes some rather tedious detours to get you to the actual wedding. Going by the standards of Indian Weddings, that shouldn't have been as boring or as much of a drag as it's made out to be in this book - but somehow, the pace takes a long time to pick up. You meet a long list of characters along the way, and therein lies a quirk of the author. She inserts a couple of lines of backstory to dozens of side characters, most of whom don't reappear in the story, or even if they do, their earlier backstories are not really picked up. What comes off as somewhat amusing to begin with, gradually comes across as forced. It's as if she wants to introduce as much quirkiness of the locals as is possible. So much so that even chapter headings are used to tell another factoid of some character(s). Certainly intended to be funny or borderline-weird, ultimately it doesn't turn out to be used well enough, and neither the rhythm nor the tone is uniform throughout.
The last third of the book is set as a good pace, and things seem to be actually happening. If you can make it that far, you'll be reasonably satisfied with the overall package. I must admit despite loving the author's earlier book ([b:The Windfall|32569560|The Windfall|Diksha Basu|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1481043273l/32569560._SY75_.jpg|53141779]), I found myself struggling to like this one. Many characters started out as interesting, but ended up shallow or - worse - flat.
Mr. Das and Nono eventually come out to be the most endearing characters, their dialog delivery spot-on, and their in-your-face punch-lines belie expectations, and therefore end up seeming genuinely funny. However, like all Indian weddings, there are just too many characters to allow focusing on most of them, and while one can easily see tremendous potential in, say, the bride-and-groom's banter, and with their respective future in-laws, the club's snobbish staff, the Old Delhi crowd... there's not much real estate devoted to that.
I'll still look out for this author's next work, but with less anticipation than I had prior to reading this one.
The story is of Tina Das, an NYC-based 30-something TV producer of Indian origin, who has been having second thoughts about almost everything in her life. She can't make up her mind as to whether being in India is good for her or not, or whether her parents' divorce was good for her or not, or whose fault it was, or how should she react to it (even though it's been nearly a decade since her parents decided to separate!), or which subject would work best for her next show, or should she think of settling down, who does she love, does she love anyone? should she? could she?
You get the drift.
Occasionally funny, though not so much in the first half, the book takes some rather tedious detours to get you to the actual wedding. Going by the standards of Indian Weddings, that shouldn't have been as boring or as much of a drag as it's made out to be in this book - but somehow, the pace takes a long time to pick up. You meet a long list of characters along the way, and therein lies a quirk of the author. She inserts a couple of lines of backstory to dozens of side characters, most of whom don't reappear in the story, or even if they do, their earlier backstories are not really picked up. What comes off as somewhat amusing to begin with, gradually comes across as forced. It's as if she wants to introduce as much quirkiness of the locals as is possible. So much so that even chapter headings are used to tell another factoid of some character(s). Certainly intended to be funny or borderline-weird, ultimately it doesn't turn out to be used well enough, and neither the rhythm nor the tone is uniform throughout.
The last third of the book is set as a good pace, and things seem to be actually happening. If you can make it that far, you'll be reasonably satisfied with the overall package. I must admit despite loving the author's earlier book ([b:The Windfall|32569560|The Windfall|Diksha Basu|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1481043273l/32569560._SY75_.jpg|53141779]), I found myself struggling to like this one. Many characters started out as interesting, but ended up shallow or - worse - flat.
Mr. Das and Nono eventually come out to be the most endearing characters, their dialog delivery spot-on, and their in-your-face punch-lines belie expectations, and therefore end up seeming genuinely funny. However, like all Indian weddings, there are just too many characters to allow focusing on most of them, and while one can easily see tremendous potential in, say, the bride-and-groom's banter, and with their respective future in-laws, the club's snobbish staff, the Old Delhi crowd... there's not much real estate devoted to that.
I'll still look out for this author's next work, but with less anticipation than I had prior to reading this one.
this book was basically plotless, and I found all of the characters to be incredibly annoying.
It’s a no from me.
It’s a no from me.
Pros:
-Indian representation in a book
-talks about socioeconomic issues
And that's about it.
Otherwise, there were weird grammatical errors, trigger warnings for: fatphobia, micr0-aggressions, and classism
It keeps being compared to My Big Fat Greek Wedding & Crazy Rich Asians and honestly...I didn't see it. All I read was dialogue, description. Dialogue, description. Tina is extremely unlikable, and she's always complaining. In fact, everyone is always complaining. About someone else, their job, it's ridiculous. the story dragged so much, and I was expecting a little bit of humor or comedy, but it didn't land. Nothing truly exciting happens, except for one thing toward the end.
I wish the author luck in their endeavors, but this really was not my favorite.
-Indian representation in a book
-talks about socioeconomic issues
And that's about it.
Otherwise, there were weird grammatical errors, trigger warnings for: fatphobia, micr0-aggressions, and classism
It keeps being compared to My Big Fat Greek Wedding & Crazy Rich Asians and honestly...I didn't see it. All I read was dialogue, description. Dialogue, description. Tina is extremely unlikable, and she's always complaining. In fact, everyone is always complaining. About someone else, their job, it's ridiculous. the story dragged so much, and I was expecting a little bit of humor or comedy, but it didn't land. Nothing truly exciting happens, except for one thing toward the end.
I wish the author luck in their endeavors, but this really was not my favorite.
Meh. The book tries to be both a Crazy Rich Asians style indulgence and a deep exploration of identity & as a result, ends up being neither.
What an amazing novel to fill ones heart with love meaning soul and mood. Basu does a great job creating, in this genre, a novel that warms the heart and bring joy to your surroundings!! A must read to fill your soul with love!!!