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heather667's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Graphic: Confinement, Child abuse, Chronic illness, Colonisation, Incest, Emotional abuse, Infertility, Infidelity, Medical content, Misogyny, Sexism, Suicidal thoughts, Blood, Murder, Pregnancy, Violence, Death, Domestic abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Physical abuse, and Kidnapping
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Pedophilia, and Grief
Minor: Lesbophobia, Rape, Suicide, and Homophobia
forlorn_traveller's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Moderate: Medical content, Medical trauma, and Confinement
Minor: Blood, Violence, Misogyny, and Homophobia
honeycomb_system's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
The main character, Perveen Mistry, is based on the first female lawyer in India. We really enjoyed watching her use the law to fight for justice where only she can: within a Muslim household’s zenana. We also enjoyed watching her grow as she becomes more competent, takes on new challenges, and learns to work around the constraints society places on her. The characters in the story kept us hooked – for the most part.
Sadly there were some sections where the book started to drag and it felt like we were slogging through the doldrums. We enjoyed the rest of the book so much that it thoroughly aggravates us that Massey chose to include the chapters set in 1917.
But we still loved the book enough to read it four out of five stars and buy the sequel.Perveen, her father Jamshadji, and her friend Alice are all characters we definitely want to spend more time with. We also love the vivid pictures Massey paints of life in Bombay with the wide variety of cultures and their clashes with British colonialism. She uses just the right salting of languages like Hindi to add authentic detail without confusing readers who don’t know these terms – Especially important in an audiobook when we didn’t know how to spell the non-English words in order to look them up.
Soneela Nankani does an excellent job of narrating. She gives slightly different accents to characters from different cultures and has a pleasant voice. She never seems to stumble over non-English words.while some reviewers found it difficult to keep track of who is who, we had no trouble tracking who was speaking. While we appreciate the energy Nankani brings to the narration, after a while we noticed that she seems to give every sentence an astonished feeling, which does become annoying. We noticed that Audible switches narrators with the sequel. We usually hate it when they do this, but perhaps Sneha Mathan’s narration will not suffer from the constant astonishment problem.
A Word to the Wise (Content Warnings)
Major: Domestic violence; sexism, misogyny, and colonialism/racism appropriate to the period; toxic family dynamics; manipulation/gaslighting; religious abuse.
Moderate: Assault, alcoholism, kidnapping, child abuse, violence, homophobia, heteronormativity.
Minor: Brief mention of blood, incest.
TL;DR
We already consider the Asian Readathon a success because we found a new series to love. The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey is a book anyone who loves a good cozy legal mystery with a plucky heroine should try. we are already looking forward to book two!
Graphic: Domestic abuse, Sexism, Misogyny, Racism, and Toxic relationship
Moderate: Alcoholism, Kidnapping, Child abuse, Violence, and Homophobia
Minor: Blood